Policy in a healthy, secular society should always be based on sound reason and science, never on religious or superstitious beliefs. The FFRF Action Fund supports evidence-based policies, and opposes any actions that would legitimize pseudoscience. Lawmakers have an obligation to restrict harmful behavior, and to enforce reasonable regulations on legitimate practices. The government should avoid conflating the two by including potentially dangerous pseudoscience under a regulatory scheme intended for science-based practices.

Some examples of this misstep are laws treating homeopathic “medicine” similarly to real medication, or treating naturopathic practices similarly to the practice of medicine. Such laws create an appearance of government endorsement of debunked and potentially dangerous practices. Instead, states should identify and prohibit dangerous conduct, while leaving innocuous superstitious practices without any state licensure or other false appearances of legitimacy.