State leaders in New York have identified the next hazards facing children. But it isn’t obesity or diabetes or illiteracy. Nope. In their infinite wisdom, officials at the Health Department have compiled a list of dangerous and risky play activities including — are you ready for this? — such classics as: whiffle ball, kickball, dodgeball, Capture the Flag, Steal the Bacon, Red Rover, and Freeze Tag.

The list also includes actual dangerous activities like archery, scuba diving and horseback riding.

So there’s that.

The new safety regulations were crafted to close a loophole in a 2009 state law, which allowed indoor camp programs to operate without oversight. Now, in the state of New York, “any program that offers two or more organized recreational activities – with at least one of them on the risky list – is deemed a summer camp and subject to state regulation.”

Programs that end up having to register with the state as a summer camp would be subjected to a $200 registration fee and forced to provide some form of medical staff for the kids.

“It looks like Albany bureaucrats are looking for kids to just sit in a corner in a house all day and not be outside,” said state Sen. Patty Ritchie, according to the NY Post.

Countered State Health Department spokeswoman Diane Mathis: “There will be flexibility in how the law is implemented.”

The list of activities was crafted with the help of camp groups and was only meant to offer “guidance” to local governments and organizations. Not every program will need to hire a medical staff, Mathis added, saying that “only a plan” needs to be in place.

The problem with the new law, or regulation, or suggestion, or whatever it is, has nothing to do with the foolhardy designation of physical activities and games as dangerous, risky or unsafe. On some level, games like Red Rover and Freeze Tag can be “unsafe.” That’s up for debate and interpretation, though, and it seems they aren’t any more unsafe now than they have been in the last 50 years.

No, the problem has to do with how legislators went about attempting to close a loophole. They wanted more oversight on recreation and camp programs, which is their right to ensure the safety of kids, but they went about it in a completely nonsensical manner. So nonsensical, in fact, that the UK Daily Mail is reporting the new list has already been thrown out after the immediate backlash. A new, broader list of safety regulations is being drawn up for release on May 16.

Instead of just requiring all programs to register with the state, regardless of the program’s size, and then institute certain fees and regulations depending on the program’s size, the state of New York tried to be cute and clever about solving their problem. Now they look foolish.

But list or no list, the Nanny State attitude of New York Health Department officials is the real problem here. What does it say about the state of our culture when we want to regulate the play of children? You might as well just institute a strict schedule of daily activities that is permissible.

It’s one thing to set broad regulations in the hopes that citizens act in a lawful manner. It’s another thing entirely when the government begins the first wave of prohibition in the name of protecting people from consensual crimes. Gambling, especially poker, prostitution laws (the only difference between legal porn and illegal prostitution seems to be the use of a camera), smoking bans, alcohol sale restrictions, baggy pants in Florida, certain narcotics and now, sadly, we can add children’s recreation to that list.

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