Thanks to Rebekah for passing me this bit of legislation. Illinois is considering ammeneding their body piercing codes with the following bit of law, and I think it's safe to assume that other states are doing similar things:
(720 ILCS 5/12-10.2 new)
Sec. 12-10.2. Tongue splitting.
(a) In this Section, "tongue splitting" means the cutting of a human tongue into 2 or more parts.
(b) A person may not perform tongue splitting on another person unless the person performing the tongue splitting is licensed to practice medicine in all its branches under the Medical Practice Act of 1987 or licensed under the Illinois Dental Practice Act.
(c) A physician or dentist authorized under subsection (b) to perform tongue splitting may perform tongue splitting on an individual only if there is a therapeutic or clinical basis for performing the procedure on that individual.
(d) Sentence. Tongue splitting performed in violation of this Section is a Class A misdemeanor for a first offense and a Class 4 felony for a second or subsequent offense.
I do worry that this may be worded so as to ban tongue splitting by doctors as well — is there a “therapeutic or clinical basis” for doing the procedure? I'm not sure you'll find any doctors willing to make that statement. Which means that the end result of this legislation is lots of underground work and self-splitting, meaning more injuries. If they had any sense they'd just tell doctors to “go for it”.
Anyway, there are always journalists asking piercers about tongue splitting. Many of those piercers actually do the procedure. My strong advice to you would be to not go on public record about it… Do you really want to get arrested and potentially lose your studio over a stupid newspaper article that will probably just slag you anyway?
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