Taxing tanning, just another example of how treatment is replacing prevention

Last week, I was bombarded by emails with special holiday discounts and offers from different tanning salons I have frequented over the past four years that somehow slip through the spam filter. Yesterday, I received an email from one of those places with the subject line. "Help Stop the Federal Tanning Tax BEFORE 12/24/09." REALLY? Oh, dear.

Now, I hadn't really heard too much about this tanning tax. But the long and short of it is that the new health care bill the Senate is futzing around with now includes a 5 percent tax on "indoor tanning services," instead of the previous tax on elective cosmetic procedures. (Still unclear to me is if "indoor tanning services" includes spray tans--or tanning/bronzing creams for that matter--as these are also methods of getting a tan indoors, however they are not skin cancer-causing.)

Now, in my opinion this tanning tax is a great idea. If we can't outlaw something that is clearly harmful, the next logical step is to tax it, to hopefully dissuade people from doing it. As an aside, if I had my way, there would be an even higher tax on cigarettes, I hate the stupid things. Frankly, I think it would be fantastic if cigarettes were outlawed, but I know this won't be happening anytime in my life. Also “personal freedoms, and blah blah blah,” etc. Whatever. It doesn't even bother me so much that people smoke—except my family and friends because they are important to me and I don't want them to die. What bothers me is that there's some corporate fat cat getting rich off of people’s addiction. And basically, that’s what tanning boils down to. It’s a business where people (like me) get addicted.

I agree with this doctor though, that a tax will do little to prevent people who are already regular tanners from keeping on tanning. If they have to spend 5 percent more, they will:

Dr. Robinson foresees the indoor-tanning tax dissuading first-time users and people considering “event tanning” before a prom or wedding. But she isn’t hopeful that the “twice-a-week tanner” will stop. “They are truly addicted to the feel-good tendencies from having a tan,” she said. “They will spend money on that, and not spend it on other things.”

Now, the whole tanning thing is a rough topic for me. I touched on this in a column I wrote a couple months back. It's rough, because probably six months ago, I was a self-proclaimed sun worshipper. Tanning itself made me feel good and being tan made me feel good. I hate being that flip-floppy person who thinks this way one day and that way the next (Example: the butter versus margarine debate.) But recently, I did a little cost-benefit analysis, and came to the conclusion that it's just a dumb move. My health won out. I haven’t been tanning since last February. But, I can without a doubt say that if this tax had come about 2 years ago, it wouldn’t have kept me from going to the tanning salon.

I guess what my opinion boils down to is this: The tanning tax won’t prevent most people from tanning, but really that’s not the government's intention anyway. The point is to increase federal revenue to support the proposed government-run health care system. A health care system that is currently crippled because people aren’t making the proper health decisions they should be making based on proven scientific knowledge that we have (case in point, tanning is cancer-causing) and people are requiring more health care (melanoma removal).

And around and around we go, I guess, with treatment trumping prevention. It's sad.