09.07.11
The California Senate has approved and sent to Governor Jerry Brown, Senate Bill 746, which would ban children under 18 from using indoor tanning beds.
Co-sponsored by AIM at Melanoma and the California Society of Dermatology & Dermatological Surgery, SB 746 would replace the current law, which requires 14-17 year olds to obtain parental permission to use a tanning bed. Currently, children under 14 are prohibited from using tanning beds.
According to AIM at Melanoma, an international foundation dedicated to melanoma research and patient advocacy, nearly 28 million individuals use tanning beds in the U.S. annually, of which 2.3 million are teens. Those who use tanning beds before the age of 20 double their risk of developing melanoma. Melanoma is the No. 1 cancer killer of young women between the ages of 25-30, and second only to breast cancer in women 30-34.
More than 8,000 new cases of melanoma were diagnosed in California in 2011.
Valerie Guild, president of AIM at Melanoma, urged Governor Brown to break new ground by signing SB 746 into law.
"It is highly disturbing that so many young women are being affected unnecessarily by this horrific disease," said Guild. "Governor Brown has a unique opportunity to blaze a trail by banning minors from using tanning beds. We want him to join us in the fight against this preventable killer.”
"Scientific research has shown conclusively that tanning beds cause skin cancer,” said Senator Ted Lieu, who backed the bill in the Senate. “The younger kids are when they start using tanning beds, the greater the cumulative damage to their skin and the more likely they are to die of skin cancer.”
If SB 746 is signed into law, it would take effect January 1, 2012 and make the Golden State the first in the nation with such a ban.