Teens may be barred from tanning beds

B. C. weighs whether to impose outright ban or require parental consent

The B. C. government will be bringing in new rules to regulate tanning- bed use by young people, B. C. Health Minister Michael de Jong said Monday.

The province is deciding whether youths under 18 will be banned from using tanning beds, or if they will need parental consent. Either option will require new regulations.

De Jong said he would like the decision to be made within a few months.

“I think it’s clear that there is a strong desire to regulate the access that minors have to tanning beds. I think that debate has evolved, really, to a choice between requiring specific parental consent or an outright ban,” de Jong said in an interview.

“Both represent a form of regulation. One is obviously more directive and intrusive than the other.” The health minister said he will release

a report from the Indoor Tanning Working Group in early March, in order to stimulate public discussion, before the government makes a decision on the regulation.

The report was completed nearly three months ago, commissioned by the province after the Union of B. C. Municipalities passed a resolution at the end of September calling for regulation of tanning beds.

De Jong said he needed time to study the report and discuss it with his Liberal colleagues, which is why it is being released in March.

An increasing array of medical and health groups are calling for a ban on youth under 18 using tanning beds because, the groups say, they cause cancer.

The Canadian Paediatric Society is the latest organization to call on the provincial and federal governments to ban minors from using tanning beds.

The ban request follows similar calls from the Canadian Dermatological Association, the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Cancer Society and the World Health Organization.

British Columbia’s health officers also support a prohibition on youth using tanning beds.

“It’s the medical community that is saying this is a cancercausing agent,” said Canadian Paediatric Society president Dr. Richard Stanwick.

Stanwick is also the chief medical health officer of the Vancouver Island Health Authority, where he helped spearhead a push for a ban in the Victoria area that goes into effect in mid- April.

Surrey and Vancouver are also considering regulating tanningbed use by minors, said Stanwick.

“The big push from industry is that parents should decide. Well, parents in British Columbia cannot walk into a bar and buy their 14- year- old son a triple scotch. That is not acceptable,” said Stanwick.

He said the intensity of the tanning beds can be 10 to 15 times that of the noonday sun, meaning that 10 minutes in a tanning bed is equivalent to a day at the beach.

Studies, including one from the University of Minnesota, have found that people who used sunbeds regularly before the age of 30 — compared with those who did not — were 75 per cent more likely to develop skin cancer.

Stanwick noted skin damage is cumulative, so the sooner people start, the sooner they get “a burden of damage” to their skin.

The Joint Canadian Tanning Association is in favour of regulation, but not a ban on youth under 18 years old.

Instead, regulations should require the permission of parents, said Steven Gilroy, executive director of the Kelowna-based tanning association.

If the province bans minors from using tanning beds Gilroy wondered if it would also ban parents from taking their kids on vacations to sunny destinations. “Sunlight has a higher risk because it’s an uncontrolled environment,” he said.

Tanning- bed operators should also be required to have certification to run tanning equipment, and fair- skinned people who always burn and never tan should be banned from using the beds at all ages, said Gilroy, who sat on the provincial working group.

There are about 550 tanning bed locations in B. C., half of which have a single bed, such as in some beauty salons.

Canadian Cancer Society public issues director Kathryn Seely also sat on the working group.

She said studies in the United States have shown there is no reduction in children using tanning beds when parents’ permission is required.

Nova Scotia is the only Canadian province to ban minors from using tanning beds.

France has a similar ban, and the Australian state of New South Wales will ban tanning beds outright by 2014.