Say Anything Blog

The nanny state hard at work.

Ashley Callahan’s plan to tan for an upcoming school dance would be illegal under a bill proposed by North Dakota lawmakers.

House Bill 1154 aims to prohibit people younger than 16 from using tanning facilities.

The idea was brought forward by two Bismarck-area dermatologists, said Rep. George Keiser, R-Bismarck, the prime sponsor of the bill.

“These folks are the people who work in the industry every day that have the opportunity to see skin cancer,” Keiser said.

“Dermatologists in general do not like tanning beds at all, but they have a great concern when people begin to use them at too early of an age,” he said.

I don’t really have an opinion on tanning beds one way or another, but I sure don’t like the idea of the state stepping in to do what should be the parents’ job in keeping too-young kids away from the tanning booths.

Really, how much of a problem is this?  If there has been a spate of teenagers with skin cancer caused by tanning beds I’ve yet to hear about it.  If these dermatologists in Bismarck are worried about skin cancer let them raise some money to run ads about it or convince tanning salons to establish a minimum age policy.  What we don’t need are our tax dollars going to enforce a law that is aimed at solving a problem that, to this observer, doesn’t even seem to exist in the first place.

Does a ban on under-16 tanning seem like a small thing?  Sure, because it is.  But we citizens must always be wary of government bans which are ever encroaching upon our freedoms.  This time the government trying to protect us by banning something trivial like tanning.  Next time the government may try to protect us by banning something we like.  Like aluminum bats or certain types of restaurants.

The positions we citizens should have when it comes to this sort of legislation is that we are capable of making ourselves and that we don’t need the government to protect us from our own choices.