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I really wish legislation like this was structured as an experiment, so we could robustly determine if it worked. Otherwise someone will come along in ten years and rip it out, saying there’s no evidence it improved things.

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The sad thing is that politicians who get these laws passed don't want to collect data about whether the laws were successful.

If they collect data and it turns out the laws aren't helpful or the laws are actually harmful, then the politician's career and reputation may be trashed. But if they pretend like the law can't possibly be bad and never check on that, then they're protected.

The US is structured like an experiment; different states have different policies, so in ten years we can compare the mental health of teens in California with teens in other states without this bill and see if it made any difference.

Laboratories of democracy, I get it… but simply allowing law to vary by state is just the enabler. There’s a lot of structure you could add to make it an actual experiment.

There are too many confounding factors for that to be useful.

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