Los Angeles County declines to force condom use in porn films

County officials said the California Legislature would need to approve legislation requiring condom use for pornography shoots. They said it would be difficult to try to regulate the porn industry through the county's Public Health Department.

"It is very, very difficult to implement. There are roughly 200 production companies with about . . . 1,200 actors," said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county's public health chief. "All you need is a room and a camera and a bed, basically, to do this kind of shoot, and we have no ability to police this."

Fielding said it would be difficult for public health officials to prove if the movies were produced in L.A. County or elsewhere because producers often do not apply for filming licenses. In a memo to supervisors on Sept. 17, health officials warned that such an effort would be costly because the Public Health Department would need to identify filming sites and monitor compliance, which would require significant staff time.

"We worked closely with county counsel trying to see if there's some other way that we could effectively do this under existing authority, and . . . basically, we're unlikely to have an effective approach to prevent them from acquiring preventable STDs," Fielding said Tuesday. "It's very disturbing to come to that conclusion, but we also have to be realistic."