O Ban-It-A, My Home and Native Land

So . . . I read in the paper last week that they’re trying to ban teens from using tanning salons. If there’s one thing the Canadian governments are good at, it’s banning stuff. That’s their forte!

I can think of many recent bans and rules that have been proposed: light bulbs, weed killer, helmets for tobogganing, garbage disposals in the sink. This last one is my favourite, because it’s legal to sell it, it’s legal to buy it, and it’s legal to have one in your house – but it’s illegal to install one. So you can see a selection of them at Home Depot, purchase it, bring it home, but don’t even think of putting under the sink or the cops will come and get you. Or at least fine you.

Banning stuff is a very visible, obvious way of a government coming out against something, but it is almost always a misplaced overreaction. A lot of people drink bottled water, and some of the bottles end up in the garbage – let’s ban bottled water. A similar kind of thing is what happened a couple of winters ago, when a kid got a head injury while tobogganing – let’s make a toboggan helmet law. Never mind that there had only been 4 such accidents in the previous seven years; we need to make sure that everyone knows that we’re against toboggan-based injuries.

The tanning salon example is another case of the government stepping in with a rule that, when you think about it, makes little sense. Unless tanning, like smoking, is something that is picked up as a teenager and is then hard to stop (or addictive), setting the rule at eighteen years of age will have little long-term impact on the health of the populace. People will just wait a bit longer to get that healthy bronze sheen.

There are two other things going on here. One is the modern “think of the children” attitude, where we have to protect our kids from everything. I have kids, and I want to protect them. I expect the government to help protect them too, but more from criminals or alien invasions than from tanning beds. I don’t want my kids going to tanning salons, so I will make that clear. If my kids don't listen, that’s on me. I don’t want them avoiding certain behaviours because The Man says so; I want them to make the choice themselves.

The other complicating factor is that the government is also an investor in our health. Because we have government-funded health care (not going into the merits of that today, that’s a whole other series of posts), they have a financial interest in the populace staying healthy. But to single out one or two things will not lessen the tax burden on health care. And I don’t think tanning is the major concern. If they really wanted to cut costs, ban fat and sugar and salt. And alcohol, smoking, driving, guns, knives, swimming pools, and toboggans. But because too many people like those things (or at least some of them), they won’t do it; better to pick a target that won’t cost too many votes. And we all know that people under eighteen don’t vote.

Let’s work on helping people make better choices rather than constricting them. Because historically, reducing choices and options doesn’t work (see: prostitution, drugs, etc.). People will do what they want to do, even if it’s getting a deep, brown, carcinogenic tan while smoking crack with a hooker. Banning things isn’t going to stop people from making bad choices – you could ban Chevy Chase and there would still be a few people secretly selling DVDs of his movies. Now that’s a crime!