Dermatology World May 2011 : Page-30
BANNING the TAN GAINS MOMENTUM Last year in Dr. Brod’s home state of Pennsylvania, leg-islation banning tanning bed use for individuals under the age of 14 and requiring parental accompaniment for those under 18 made it through two senate committees — the furthest it has ever progressed — but didn’t pass for partisan and scal reasons, he said. Moving forward, the bill may include amended language to allow for the state to accumulate funding from the licensing fees in order to pay for enforcement e orts. In prior years, the public health department was resistant to taking on additional regulatory activity, but that resistance has subsided as knowledge about the dangers of indoor tan-ning has grown, Dr. Brod added. Given the budgetary constraints faced by many states across the country, it is not surprising that they aren’t dedicating a lot of money toward enforcing these regulations, stated Allan Halpern, M.D., chief of dermatology at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Consequently, he suggested, these regulations should be written to be self-sustaining from a budget-ary perspective. When indoor tanning regulation is re-introduced in Massachusetts this year, the bill will propose that tanning salon operators and employees pay a licensing fee to each of the state’s 351 local public health depart-ments to be used toward enforcement, said Martin Cohn, associate director of the Massachusetts Academy of Dermatology. To combat another argument that the bill will hurt small businesses, the language will be changed to regulate “tanning beds” and not “tanning devices” so that it won’t preclude the use of tanning sprays, Cohn said. He is con dent that these revisions will be enough to pass the bill, which proposes to ban individuals under the age of 16 from using indoor tanning salons and requires parental consent for those between 16 and 18. This bill has consistently passed the state Senate and almost passed in the House, but then a member of the House introduced an amendment to retain the ages in the current legislation at 14 and 16, respectively, Cohn explained. That amendment was enough to send the bill for reconciliation to the conference committee where it remained until the legislative session ended in 2010. In February, the same House member led a bill using the ages in the current regulation. “So this year, we’re trying to pass one bill and kill another,” he said. The Academy o ers a wealth of information for CONTINUED on p. 32 According to the AAD’s indoor tanning resources for the media: • On an average day in the United States, more than 1 million people use tanning salons. • Nearly 70 percent of tanning salon patrons are Caucasian girls and women, primarily aged 16 to 29 years. • Melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, is now the second most common cancer in women ages 20 to 29 years of age. • The FDA estimates that 3,000 hospital emergency room cases a year are due to indoor tanning bed and lamp exposure. For more statistics on tanning, visit www.aad.org/media-resources/stats-and-facts/prevention-and-care/indoor-tanning. For more details on the prevalence of tanning in young women and their attitudes about it, turn to the Facts at Your Fingertips column on p. 48. S ’ O H W ? G N I N TAN 30 DERMATOLOGY WORLD // May 2011 www.aad.org
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