There have been previous newspaper reports of pilots being momentarily dazzled by laser lights. In one case there was a stadium rock event going on that resulted in a complaint about the laser light show bothering a flight crew.
There doesn't seem to be any concerted effort to control this problem, just an event-by-event reaction. Combine that with the access that dedicated nerds have to obsolete high-tech gadgets and you have the makings of a serious future problem. GPS jammers, lasers, radio transmitters... there is a whole gamut of toys available to people with nothing better to do with their lives than cause trouble, perhaps not really meaning to.
Even here you can see that some of the people responding are ignoring the real problem to nit-pick the technical aspects of other replies. What, they wouldn't mind being in the back of an aircraft with a crew having vision problems?
I have noticed that those little laser pointers are on sale, along with the usual tasteful assortment of other goods for semi-morons, on filling station shelves. We had one of our number amusing himself by shining one in the eyes of the other barflies one evening in our 'pub'. Perhaps we must wait for a report of one being used in the cabin of an airliner by bored and boozed-up SLF. I asked to examine the object in question, which had the usual warning message about possible eye damage. I suggested that he put his little toy away lest he be made the subject of a complaint but that was about all I could do at the time.
All of this seems to be part of a general trend towards the development of technology by geniuses that then trickles down to be (mis-) used by the hoi polloi. I remember chatting with a fellow who had a brain the size of a planet; he had access to one of the only two lasers in the state of Maryland back in about 1973. Now any jerk can buy one off the shelf.
We used to have people just zapping themselves trying to clean dead Indians out of their TV sets back in the Fifties. Then there was that celebrated idiot who got hold of a military surplus JATO unit that he built into the boot of his car, winning himself a Darwin Award. Now we have people bragging about 'dotting' aircraft. What next? Well, we have had a couple of dedicated enthusiasts firing off Strelas at an Israeli 757, only narrowly missing due to lack of training. Thanks to extensive de-briefings from the technical press they have learned where they went wrong so that they will presumably try again. That was perhaps the most extreme example to date of military technology escaping proper control, but it won't be the last one. And there are various non-military but high-tech devices out there, such as lasers, that can pose serious threats to civil aviation. If there is some study group paying attention to this growing problem I am not aware of it.