When you consider the activities of the Colorado General Assembly, you could be forgiven for assuming that all Colorado children are orphans or, at best, helpless components of dysfunctional families headed by supremely negligent parents.
Thus Republicans offer bills to protect children from the horrors of exposure to racy magazine covers and the flags of foreign nations. Democrats fret about smoking drivers, playground bullies and the shortage of certified trauma counselors.
And recently I have learned that some Democrats also want to protect teenagers from tanning parlors.
Natural suntans come about because the sun provides not just visible light, but also invisible, ultra-violet radiation – its wavelength is a little shorter, and somewhat more energetic, than the visible red- to-violet spectrum. The ultra-violet radiation reacts with the skin (in most fair-skinned folks) to produce melanin, a chemical that darkens the skin and protects against sunburn. This radiation can also provoke a skin cancer known as melanoma.
Tanning parlors get the same results by broiling humans under special fluorescent lamps that produce lots of ultra-violet radiation.
To protect minors from indoor suntans, Sen. Bob Hagedorn and Rep. Anne McGihon, both Democrats from the metro area, have introduced a bill: “An owner, employee or operator of an artificial tanning device or tanning facility shall not allow a person under eighteen years of age to use an artificial tanning device unless the person has a written prescription from a physician authorizing the use of the device.”
To buttress their case, the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services heard from Brittany Leitz, the current Miss Maryland, who said she suffered from melanoma produced by youthful over-use of indoor tanning. A Denver dermatologist said indoor tanning is “carcinogenic exposure that is being actively marketed by the tanning industry to children under 18.”
Why minors or adults would want tans is an interesting bit of sociology. In days of yore, when most people – i.e., the lower orders of society – worked outdoors, a pale complexion indicated you were of a superior social class that could stay out of the burning sun. Nowadays, when most work is done indoors, a tan indicates that you have the leisure for sunning on a tropical beach while your inferiors were toiling under a roof. And if you really don’t have that kind of leisure, you can fake some status with a visit to the tanning parlor.
So in general, indoor tanning is a risky activity that people pursue for their own pleasure. So also, though, are skiing, white-water floating, barrel-racing and a host of other activities that are vital to Colorado’s economy. And minors don’t need a prescription for those pursuits, which are instead “actively marketed.” Time for some more laws?
If the idea behind this bill is to prevent skin cancer, consider Colorado’s high elevation and dry air, which makes for some potent sunshine, especially in the ultra- violet range. That may explain why Colorado has a 30 percent higher rate of skin cancer than the country as a whole.
So if kids are supposed to stay out of tanning salons for their health, they also ought to stay indoors playing video games, especially at high altitudes where they might well be out hiking, skiing, fishing or otherwise menacing their health. Parents who allow their children to play outdoors must be engaging in a form of child endangerment, and teachers should thus be required to report any suspicious dermal glow to the appropriate authorities.
And how do we enforce this ban if some kid, unable to visit a parlor, buys some special lights and sets up his own indoor tanning facility in the basement? And invites friends to use it? What new special law-enforcement task forces will be required to root out yet another variety of abuse of prescription medication? Will we send parents to jail for possessing tanning lamps in a household with minor children, or will just seizing their home be enough?
I would feel much better about the intelligence and good sense of my fellow citizens if every tanning parlor in Colorado went bankrupt next week for lack of patronage. As for the teenagers, we spend billions on their education every year. If they don’t learn a few things in the process (such as that too much exposure to radiation isn’t good for you), then this deficiency is not going to be remedied by requiring minors to get prescriptions before trying to improve their social status by tanning their hides.
People will be stupid. The legislature ought to resist the temptation to be even stupider in response.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
