Sipping Sunscreen

Mark your calendars. Feb. 22, 2017 is a date which will forever be remembered in Alabama history. On that day, the Alabama Senate Health Committee voted 8-0 to approve Senate Bill 63 guaranteeing students the right to: you guessed it, use sunscreen at school.

Sunscreen was previously not allowed at school without a prescription, because it was dubiously classified as medicine. State laws might indicate that sunscreen is a type of medicine, but nobody ever told me what disease sunscreen is supposed to cure.

This bill may be a good first step to solve the major health crisis that nobody knew existed – indoor sunburns. If you are one of the many victims of indoor sunburns, you can now protect yourself from all of the ultraviolet radiation that you are faced with in the classroom.

Just be sure not to overdose. Remember, sunscreen is medicine.

Nobody is denying that the Sunscreen bill will greatly increase the health and well-being of the student body, but many local officials fear that the new bill will have an unintended side effect: an unending cascade of bills for allowing all sorts of lotions, sprays, balms and ointments in schools as well.

After passing the bill allowing sunscreen in schools, we can now see with our own eyes that the state leaders in Alabama are solving the greatest issues of our time. However, people from every corner of Alabama are waiting in suspense to find out which important issue our leaders will tackle next. They could start an infrastructure project, reform our failing education system or start a lottery to name only a few issues. Then again, maybe we can just wait to see what brilliant idea Senate Health Committee Chairman Jim McClendon has for us next.

“I may have to come up with a Chap Stick bill,” McClendon said.

This is the level of insight that we can have come to expect from our politicians. Now when we pay our taxes, at least we will know that the money that is used to pay the salaries of our politicians is money well spent. Likewise, when we look at huge problems facing our world, we at least know that our leaders have their priorities in order.