I've used them on a few occasions (for 6 minute sessions a couple times a week) to build a base tan if I go somewhere south for vacation...since I'll burn up if I don't do that first, but I don't make a habit out of it.
I am kind of surprised and the number of posters who apparently want an overreaching government
To be honest, there a far more harmful things that people allow their kids to do than signing off on their 17 year old going to the tanning beds...people allow their kids to drive when they're 16...and the stats for car crashes by 16-18 year old show that a 16 year old driver has a bigger chance of injuring or killing themselves in a car crash than 16 year old tanner would of giving themselves skin cancer...do we ban driving now too???
Once again, we have several posters from the liberal left who are all about "it's my body and can put whatever I want in it, or flush whatever I don't want out of it" in one breath...and in the next thread, it's time to tell everyone what they can and can't do with their own person...so which is it?...I've seen at least one of the posters in this thread (I won't mention the name & violate the TOS) that has stated that they think a 16 year old girl should be allowed to get an abortion without parental consent...but now sings a different tune on the topic of getting a tan
Not surprised that this is happening in Illinois...they don't exactly have the best track record with respecting personal freedoms.
I totally agree. What sort of mentality is it that accepts an arbitrary decision by some faceless government entity to prohibit something for the totally vacuous excuse of "the public health?"
In reading these posts, you'd think all tanning beds cause cancer all the time, or that all tanning beds cause sunburns all the time, which leads to cancer all the time... at least in Illinois; and apparently in CA and VT.
What about tanning beds in the other 47 states?
Are those states less "enlightened" (no pun intended) than IL, CA, and VT? Maybe we need a "public health mandate" to educate and enlighten the citizens of those 47 states?
All tanning beds do is shorten the amount of time one needs to be exposed to UV radiation to get a tan; or a sunburn. One could get an equal amount of UV radiation by spending sufficient time outdoors, in the sun. They'd just have to spend more time there. Can someone abuse them? Absolutely. I abused a ski lift one sunny day in the winter years ago to hasten a ski tan before I returned from leave. I got 2nd degree blisters for my stupidity. Maybe for the sake of "public health" we need to ban the use of ski lifts on bright sunny days?
Consider too that the higher in altitude one gets, the greater their exposure to UV radiation - naturally. Should we ban all human outdoor activity above sea level? It'd improve the "public health," certainly.
Does too much sun create potential health problems? Yes! And major "duh!" btw.
Ever wonder why cowboys in the old west are always pictured with long sleeves? We've known about sunburn for as long as we've existed as a race. The pain of a sunburn is usually cause sufficient to prevent someone from repeating that activity too many times. Maybe we need a "public health directive" to remind us that sunburns hurt?
What frightens me is that there seem to be altogether too many people willing to give up their liberty to a faceless, unelected government bureaucracy for some unholy desire that the government assume responsibility for their welfare rather than themselves - or worse, that that same government, for some unimaginably bizarre reason, knows what's better for them than they do.
Are we really that irresponsible, ignorant, and incompetent -- have we finally spiralled down so far that we've forgotten the lessons of the common sunburn that we need the government to tell us sunburns are bad?
One of the truly scariest phrases (and ideologies) ever concocted has to be, "for the public health."
