from www.laweekly.com – After a county health official said requiring condoms on porn shoots in Los Angeles County would simply drive them outside L.A., Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky [pictured] said let them leave. “I don’t give a damn if they leave L.A. County,” he said. “This is not an industry that we want to protect and enhance.”

His remarks came as the county Board of Supervisors considered calls by AIDS health-care advocates to require condoms at porn sets in the county, which is the epicenter of the estimated $13-billion-a-year adult film industry. County health chief Jonathan Fielding said the board doesn’t have the authority to require condoms, barring a new state law that does as much.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has argued that agencies such as the state Occupational Safety and Health Standards board have the ability to require and enforce condom use under state regulation of the transmission of blood-borne pathogens in medical settings.

“In our view the current regulation, which is about preventing the transmission of blood-borne pathogens in a work place — most often in a hospital or medical setting — also applies to the porn industry,” AHF spokeswoman Lori Yeghiayan had told LA Weekly.

The county Department of Public Heath has estimated that condoms are used in less than one-fifth of heterosexual porn shoots.

The board on Tuesday wasn’t too amenable to demands by the foundation that it clamp down on the industry. Yaroslavsky, however, was sympathetic:

Porn stars, he said, “deserve some kind of a voice, some kind of protection.”