Because not enough fun things have been taken away from children this year, the buzzkills are coming after helium balloons.
Maryland, Maine, Hawaii, and many other states have taken up or passed legislation to fine people hundreds of dollars for releasing helium balloons outdoors.
In some states, it’s only mass releases of balloons that are punished. Other states will brand you a scofflaw simply for letting go of a solitary balloon.
Maine’s lower chamber passed a bill to revise the state’s law on littering to say that “‘litter’ includes all waste materials resulting from the outdoor release or abandonment of a balloon.” The bill died in the state Senate.
Virginia will fine people $25 for every balloon that is intentionally released. The bill’s sponsor, Nancy Guy, is a Virginia Beach delegate who won her 2019 election by 41 votes. Many of the balloon bills have had beachfront connections. Naturalists worry about the effect of all that plastic landing in the ocean.
“Best-case scenario, it becomes litter,” said Maryland Del. Wayne Hartman, the sponsor of that state’s balloon bill. “Oftentimes, it’s much worse.” Maryland’s law mercifully exempts 12-year-olds and younger children from the fines, and Hartman cites agricultural harms from released balloons too. “We’ve had farmers call us about balloons getting into the hay and into cows’ stomachs.”
The littering laws aren’t the only ways balloon releases can get one in trouble, though.
Salon owner Vicki Hutchinson in the United Kingdom lost her father-in-law, a beloved retired miner, to the coronavirus earlier this year. As a memorial, she gathered the deceased’s family and friends in a field across from the church where the funeral was to take place. She released balloons into the air and provided a livestream for those who couldn’t make it.
Some busybody watched the livestream and reported an illegal gathering, a crime that could carry a 10,000-euro fine. In the end, she paid 635 euros.
“Yes, I did break the law,” she told reporters outside the courthouse. “Yes, I did release balloons. But at the time, when you lose someone, you don’t think, do you?”
“We are not caged animals that have been shoved in the house,” Hutchinson said. “The way it made my family feel, and the smiles it put on people’s faces, I had to do it.”
That is hardly the sentiment of governments these days.
