The mass influx of west coasters to Colorado over the last decade or so is beginning to take its toll on statewide social policy —from the recent abomination of Amendment 41 (which was intended to “regulate” political activism, but has wound up making it impossible for government workers to give gifts to their grandchildren) to the push (yet again) by Democratic legislators to pass legislation that would turn all of Colorado’s electoral votes over to the winner of the nationwide popular vote, effectively sacrificing the will of Colorado voters on the altar of precisely the kind of populism that the founders were trying to avoid by setting up a constitutional republic (rather than a “pure” democracy).
In fact, this urge by nannystate lawmakers to micromanage every aspect of our lives—from smoking bans to bans on transfats—is beginning to move beyond parody. For instance, the latest concern of activists to catch the fancy of Colorado lawmakers (who, one would have thought, were too busy mutilating freedom of speech and assembly and trying to destroy the electoral college to take notice) is the disastrous misuse of tanning beds.
From the Rocky Mountain News:
Doctors warned Danielle Weinman when she was 16 that she might get skin cancer if she continued to lie in a tanning bed two times a day.
She didn’t listen. […]
Seven years later, she was diagnosed with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. While it isn’t certain that her disease was caused by tanning-bed use, she wonders whether there is a link.
“My mom and doctor said you are out of your mind what are you doing,” said Weinman […]. “All the education I had and everything I was told still didn’t keep me from tanning.”
Weinman was among a dozen witnesses who testified Wednesday on a measure that would ban teens from patronizing tanning salons without a doctor’s prescription. The Democratic-controlled Senate Health and Human Services Committee approved the measure on a 5-4 party line vote.
Republicans and tanning salons argued that the bill would inject the legislature into an issue that should be decided at home.
“I can’t go down the line of continuing to strip parents’ responsibility,” said Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs. “They’re not the state’s children. They’re the parents’ children.”
Senate Bill 23, by Sen. Bob Hagedorn, D-Aurora, and Rep. Anne McGihon, D-Denver, would ban artificial tans for people under 18 unless they have a rare skin condition or psychological disorder that can be helped with tanning.
”Colorado has a unique opportunity to take the lead for better health for young people,” said Dr. Hunter Sams, a Denver skin cancer surgeon, comparing the bill with laws that restrict underage smoking.
[my emphasis]
Leaving aside the presumptuousness of the government’s having assumed the role of parent by fiat (which is troubling enough, and should be rejected outright until such time as they start buying my kid Christmas and birthday presents, and laying away money for braces, should he ever need them), the question that demands asking here is this: do Democratic lawmakers really believe this measure will have any practical effect? Or, more cynically, are they only interested in looking “concerned” about a problem that they cannot hope to solve, and that their bill would likely only exascerbate?
Which, of course, it would doubtless do, thanks to a big fiery ball in the sky that doesn’t take as many precautions with blocking UV rays as do most tanning salons. Meaning that, unless these legislators have a plan to blot out the sun that I haven’t heard about—making it accessible (finally! FOR THE CHILDREN!) only to those over a certain age, or to those below the age cutoff whose families have money enough to buy a diagnosis of some seasonal depression disorder or other—they are simply forcing those teens determined to do so to find another means to tan. Like, you know, slathering themselves with butter and sitting out in the sun at high altitude.
The fact is, what Colorado “has a unique opportunity to take the lead” in here is rejecting increasingly meddlesome nannystate measures pushed by “concerned” activists, in favor of putting a show of faith in the ability of parents to parent. They likewise have an opportunity to speak to the proper role of government, which I submit, does not include showy attempts to micromanage the way UV rays are applied to skin.
Cautionary tales like Ms Weinman’s should provide lessons, certainly. But what they shouldn’t do is ennoble legislation aimed preemptively at stopping an “abuse” no one has ever shown obtains, and in the process, treat both tanning salons and parents as complicit in a manufactured healthcare epidemic.
Because, no matter how many times legislators wave off slippery slope arguments, they always seem to return to that same icy hill. And it is only a matter of time before kids will be forced by their foster parents in the government to subsist on tofu and carrot juice, while their actual parents have been so completely neutered that they become nothing more, for all practical purposes, than bossy older siblings. With wrinkles.
I wonder what sort of psychological disorder they think is going to be cured by using a tanning bed? AFAIK, seasonal affective disorder is treated by using a broad-spectrum lamp rather than a tanning bed.
Why isn’t this chick suing her mother for not stopping her from using tanning beds? It seems like that would make much more sense – her mom’s supposed to be at least marginally in charge of her wellbeing at the age of 16. Tanning salons are in charge of, well, making money.
It sounds like she needed a good spanking. And I’m sure the menfolk here will interpret that pervily.
It’s easy to figure out where this is heading . Illegal back alley tanning salons . You all laughed aboot the helmets on toboggan hills . Heh .
It could also be from decreasing the green house gasses that partially block uv rays. Oh, wait, that doesn’t conform to the agenda so i guess it’s just the tanning beds.
Hey, Jeff–have you ever gotten sunburned on your nuts? Man, that hurts!
Hah! Finally, the not-so-subtle Brown People bigotry rears its ugly head. We all knew it was just a matter of time, man.
Thereby eliminating the need of any national pol to ever visit the state of Colorado again. Which is really very considerate of your legislature if you think about it, giving up relevance on the national scale like this. I mean pols are busy people.
The Virginia legislature tried to outlaw whale-tails a couple of years ago, and some idiot up in NY is currently trying to outlaw crossing the street while talking on a cel phone or listening to an iPod. I love both of these states, but it only goes to show that pols are grandstanding idiots everywhere.
So a tan is dangerous but an a surgery to abort a baby is not. One should be outlawed, the other shouldn’t have a parent informed.
In both cases, the parents are irrelevant. I guess that’s what the philosophy behind both stances have in common.
And don’t forget your HPV vaccine. And don’t forget to not spank your precious little pumpkin. And don’t forget to show up to a teacher conference.
Or else, or else, or else.
What’s next outlawing snow because it is cold allowing only the rich & privileged to enjoy it or that it prevents children from going to school & GETTING AN EDUCATION!!!!
To make it a complete thread, all we need now is for alphie to show up & proclaim that we are losing in Iraq & intentionally targeting innocent civilians, using only the average rainfall in Argentina to suggest that that is the Bush Administrations’, not so secret policy.
When tanning beds are outlawed only sunbathers will have suntans.
Or something.
An obvious precedent for this are laws and policies that have required people under a certain age to be unable to have their ears pierced without parental consent. It would be a simple matter to require tanning salons to have parental permission on file for a client. The ear-piercing policy emphasized the primacy of the parent with respect to the decisions an adolescent could make. This approach has become anathema to the left. I disagree with your invocation of “slippery slope arguments” to describe what I would be more inclined to view as a wholesale paradigm shift.
Not to discount slippery slopes – it occurred to me the other day that climate change curricula in public schools could easily incorporate, as an exercise, a report of “ways your family contributes to the global warming problem.” How long before an instance of emissions so egregious is reported that the school system feels compelled, in turn, to notify environmental authorities?
The paradigm shift that incorporates both the tanning salon story and the climate change hypothetical might be summarized as the transition of child welfare from a focus of public policy to an instrument of public policy.
Hah – Google Ads rock … love your raisins it is then…
Mandated protection against the sun’s rays = statutory drape.
Cripes, Jeff, and I thought the Chicago City Council was meddlesome.
You really do have Big Nanny watching over you.
STOP ME BEFORE I TAN AGAIN!
Happyfeet,
Doesn’t a child who repeatedly goes to a tanning salon have his parents tacit approval?
That’s just stupid. Ear-piercings, like tattoos are irreversible (at least for a while)and involve needles.
To get a tan, one must attend the tanning salon multiple times. Who is driving the child there? Who is paying for it? The stupid mother in this piece knew it was bad for her health–and her daughter got melanoma. Cause of cancer? Bad parenting. She can blame the salon if she wants to but she is no different than the parents of 75 pound toddlers who complain about the fat content of a McDonald’s hamburger when they drive there, buy the crap and feed it to their whining progeny.
And Jeff, this isn’t the nanny state. Give credit where credit is due. This is the mommy-state. Now that a stay-at-home mom rules the roost, nannies are rightly marginalized. They are only hired help after all. The government intends to become the real mother of all, not some mercenary mommy.
I’m pretty libertarian and I don’t see the the problem with this. It seemed silly to me too initially, but repeated tanning sessions can lead to melanoma. Tanning is way more likely to lead to cancer than smoking or practically anything else a person can choose to do.
Without that bill parents were already irrelevant as far as tanning goes. Right now a parent who doesn’t want her child tanning has no ability at all to keep businesses from providing a product that poses health risks to her children.
Tanning, especially the Xtina-type overtanning, is a health risk. Currently, there is no requirement for a parent to involved in the decision so we’re allowing children to risk skin cancer without having anyone making an informed decision about the health risks. I’m sure teens believe they’re capable of making informed decisions, but I’m sure I’d have noticed if teenage girls had suddenly stopped being irrational about their appearance. Nobody could possibly believe a teenager is anywhere near as capable as an adult of intelligently weighing the benefits of a reduced skin cancer risk vs. improved appearance.
That said, I think banning it outright for anyone under 18 goes too far. I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to ban kids under 15 and require parents to sign up kids under 18 though. I also think that should be limited to businesses only and not beds at home. To turn Melissa’s example around, Colorado requires parental notification of an abortion which is a much smaller health risk than tanning.
do Democratic lawmakers really believe this measure will have any practical effect? Or, more cynically, are they only interested in looking “concerned†about a problem that they cannot hope to solve, and that their bill would likely only exascerbate?
The question answers itself.
My only interaction with public school children is the Catechism class I teach (Godbag that I am), and they are all completely indoctrinated regarding global warming.
One of the (many) reasons I homeschool. My poor dears, my oldest is 12, and he hasn’t yet been taught how to put on a condom.
The libs better think about this one. If they outlaw tanning for young girls it may make them less attractive and therefore reduce the level of teen pregnancy. This could cause, shudder, a drop in abortions among young girls. NOW and Planned Parenthood will be seriously bummed.
Did you hear that Marcotte? If you let the Man take away young womyns right to get an artificial tan then, surely, the patriarchy will have already won.
Damn the Patriarchy! It’s not enough for them to control your uterus now they want control of the skin around it. Everbody chant along with me
“ Hey, hey. Ho, Ho. The Patriarchies phallocentric desire to control womyns bodies by micromanaging their skin color has got to go”.
I should have said skin tone in the post above.
You’re not talking about part of a sea-going mammal’s anatomy, are you?
A teenage girl can drive herself there and she can pay for it herself. If a 16-year-old girl really wants to tan there isn’t a damn thing parents can do about it short of grounding her. In order to make sure she didn’t go they’d have to ground her for good. And all the time they’d get to hear from everyone else what bad parents they were for constantly grounding their daughter over visits to a tanning salon.
That woman isn’t a bad parent, like every other parent in the country she was just powerless to force her daughter to accept her choice when it came to tanning. Her daughter was perfectly free to go without her and it is currently just flat impractical for parents to enforce that decision.
I think requiring doctor’s approval goes too far and I agree that the decision belongs in the home. That’s why I think requiring a parent’s approval at the salon is a reasonable idea. I can’t imagine Republicans are suddenly going to argue a teenager shouldn’t have to accept a parent’s medical decisions.
Robert:
Whale tail via Wikipedia
I think requiring doctor’s approval goes too far and I agree that the decision belongs in the home. That’s why I think requiring a parent’s approval at the salon is a reasonable idea. I can’t imagine Republicans are suddenly going to argue a teenager shouldn’t have to accept a parent’s medical decisions.
I think people would just be flummoxed when the moment came and a child needed a permission slip to get a tan, but not an abortion.
Really, I think parents have abdicated too much of their power over their teenage children. The parents were powerless? Did the girl pay for the car? For the insurance?
Behind this story, are we going to find a set of parents that were NOT really that concerned about tanning? Half-admonishments, and a shrug of disapproval? In retrospect, NOW they claim they could do nothing, but that could just be guilt.
eh,
in point of fact, the tanning bed operators have some obligation regarding the use of their equipment by minors.
If I, as an adult, want to go into a batting cage, put in a token, put on a helment and allow myself to be struck by twenty consecutive 75 mph fastballs, that’s one thing.
If my teenage kid goes in and tries to do the same thing, the site operator has some obligation to intervene and/or deny the use of his service.
If the girl is visiting the same tanning spa twice a day, then there’s is some obligation on the business owner.
If she’s tanning bed hopping, going around to different places, that’s a different issue.
In this case, I don’t know that a law needed to be passed or if an existing statute could be applied.
After all, the parent could have sent her daughter’s picture to all the local tanning bed places with a note ‘Do not allow this person to use your facilty’
SeanH – I’m not sure that a kid can drive a vehicle by himself in Colorado until he’s 18. That’s how I read this anyway. Which would suggest that adolescents in Colorado already have a much more circumscribed life than kids elsewhere.
I don’t know, but I did at that age. Also, I don’t know where in Colorado she’s from, but for most of rural and suburban America a teenager absolutely has to have a car. There’s no public transportation and everything’s too far to walk so unless there’s a stay-at-home mom in the house a kid needs a car to go anywhere but directly to and from school. There’s the school bus for that, but if your kids are involved in any extracurriculars they’re too late for the bus and need a car.
I don’t agree with what they’re proposing, I’m just saying parental approval wouldn’t seem like an unreasonable idea to me.
They can have my tan when they … uh, sand it off my … dead … body?
This is an example of why I don’t vote any more. Not every f’ing thing under the sun needs to be the subject of legislation. It’s legislation by anecdote and hysteria, and it’s stupid.
I know the other definition. I was just looking for clarification.
HappyFeet-
In Colorado someone under 18 just has to have a learner’s permit for 12 months before they can get a driver’s license. Someone 18 that’s never had a learner’s permit doesn’t need one at all; they can just apply for a license.
So under 18 they get a permit and wait for a year or their 18th birthday, then they can apply for a license. Most kids get a permit at 15 and get their license a year later at 16.
Sean – ok – my reading comprehension skills were not up to the task of deciphering that – I remember the summer a friend of mine worked at a tanning salon and let me tan when they had unfilled slots available. My skin turned the most wondrous olive shade, and for a brief time I knew what it was to be beautiful…
The only whale tail I knew of was the one on Porsche Turbos and the like.
Let me voice my approval of the newer version, with the proviso that very few women should actually attempt it.
I’m really getting old.
You’re kidding, right?
The problem here is that mommy didn’t teach her daughter at a much younger age that it’s Mommy’s house and Mommy’s rules. Especially when it comes to matters of health. Bratty Kid can go out and tan all she wants, once she either (a) hits 18 and moves out on her own, or (b) gets emancipated and moves out on her own. As long as Mommy’s paying the rent, Mommy should be setting the rules – if Bratty Kid’s able to “drive there and pay for it herself”, she’s able to buy her own car and pay her own rent. If Mommy’s been reasonable over the years, and has known how to pick her battles, it’s unlikely that Bratty Kid will up and leave over not being allowed to tan.
Parents refusing to take responsibility for raising their kids is why so many people see nannystating as a valid option. My husband and I’ll raise our kids ourselves, thanks.
The really sad thing is that this incident is only one in ten thousand. What’s going on in statehouses daily is wholesale fraud of the constitution. All 50 of em. Soccer mom legislation, spun any way it takes to conform to somebody’s paid-off definition of constitutionality.
I’d quite seriously predict the functional end of the constitutional republic by year 7 of the upcoming Clinton Monarchy. Anything approaching constitutionalism by then will likely be in appearance and name only.
That is the way it worked at my house, if my folks had said don’t go to tanning booths, and I came home with a tan anyway, getting grounded would have been the least of my worries.
As a faithful reader from the state just to your west, I am starting to wonder what is going on over there. I have family and relatives over there. Are they going to be safe?
The funny thing is that the proposed law wouldn’t have even helped poor Danielle. The proposal would restrict those under 18 from using the tanning beds. But Danielle got the overwhelming exposure of the killer rays after she had turned 18. She was scolded at age 16, but the cancer didn’t develop until 7 years of twice-daily exposure. 5 of the 7 years Danielle went “two-a-daying” at the tanning salon would, under the proposal, have been perfectly legal.
Stoopid.
from the article:
You know, as a parent you choose your battles. There was no inevitability that the girl would end up with cancer from this.
I can’t believe I’m seeing claims that there was bad parenting going on here, or that it’s “sad mommy didn’t teach her it’s mommy’s house, mommy’s rules”. This girl could have been outstanding in every other way, and this was the thing mommy didn’t choose to do battle over.
At my home, cell phones are banned because they cause cancer.
Also, I’m typing this without a monitor.
Melissa absolutely nailed it:
Well, of course! [Slapping forehead!] First of all, you “encourage” mothers to work outside the home, then, when most of them do, the mommy-state provides day care to rear the little kidlets for them, and now takes maternal control of all aspects of their lives.
Our esteemed host was on the right track:
And just what do you think the liberal push for national health care is for, anyway? Yeah, then the government will pay for your braces and your contraceptives and all of your medical costs—and mandate that you eat a balanced diet every day, with criminal penalties for parents who don’t serve properly nutritious foods.
And all of this will be done not with malice, but because the government simply knows what’s good for us.
Dana! Now I’m slapping my forehead. You are absolutely right. It is the mommy-staters that willl ultimately reduce women to baby-making machines.
You guys just don’t get it. The government exists to govern. And it’s damned well going to justify its existence, regardless of the carping of you nay-sayers,
Heh. Define “justify.”
Robert
That’s the one. Now if they had just limited it to the male of the species not being allowed to show us his boxers over the top of his shorts, well then, different story.
I’m just glad my kids are grown up.
I don’t think I could stand all the hazards of raising children these days.
I think the key quotes from the article are:
Warned her at year one of a 7 year tanning marathon by doctors. (Notice the plural?)
I certainly there’s an issue of parental control here. And the girl was repeatedly warned of the risks.
I have no idea how teens might put themselves at risk trying to find a way to work around this law. In Colorado. Which has 300 days of sun a year. And higher UV radiation due to the altitude. It’s a puzzler!
I think Florida is going to pass a law that teenagers may only go to the beach if they have a Doctor’s prescription.
Of course, no good parent would let a teenager go to the beach anyway.
Bratty Kid obviously wasn’t raised well or she wouldn’t think it was the state’s responsibility to protect her from herself – she was warned repeatedly that she was hurting herself, her doctor AND HER MOTHER told her to stop, and she continued to do it. HER MOTHER didn’t make it a rule that she couldn’t hurt herself, or didn’t enforce the rule. She and her mother ultimately bear the responsibility for her actions.
Keep making the broad generalizations about parents not allowing their kids to go to the beach at all, Maybee. It reveals how much trouble you have with logical thinking.
The supreme court does sometimes curb this intrusiveness. In romer v. evans they shot down a piece of gay-panic hysteria.
You know, I think that they should just sue George Hamilton. This chick was lying in a tanning bed twice a day? She must’ve set the new standard for dark brown glowing in the dark.
Keep making the broad generalizations about parents not allowing their kids to go to the beach at all, Maybee. It reveals how much trouble you have with logical thinking.
OOh, nice, Alice H.
I absolutely agree with that. It’s your assertions that she wasn’t raised well that I disagree with. The fact that she would like a law to protect herself and others from their own poor choices is not proof of bad parenting, just faulty thinking. Unfortunately it is all too pervasive. I refuse to believe all of Europe was raised poorly.