Ban Tanning Salons

No, seriously. Ban 'em. Outright. Make their very existence illegal. I'm not sure how much that could be done by the federal government, although given the way the Commerce Clause works these days probably a lot of it, but whoever has the power should just ban them. Or at the very least mandate that tanning beds be renamed "cancer pods" or something. This is perhaps the best-ever case for public-health paternalism, where you have people doing something that is flamboyantly bad for their long-term health who probably don't have any idea of the risk. And why are they doing this? Fashion. Which is to say, because other people are doing it and will expect it of them. Think of it like steroids in baseball, except the motive isn't gaining objectively superior athletic skills, it's coming a bit closer to society's expectations for how you're supposed to make yourself look. It's like people doing beauty-steroids for a beauty pageant. But if dope was banned, the judges would stop preferring the dopers, i.e. if you banned indoor tanning people wouldn't be expected to do it anymore. And it's not like people couldn't orange their skin up, either by spraying some orangeiness onto it directly or by, you know, going out in the sun, preferably wearing some goddamn sunscreen. They just wouldn't be able to pay other people to blast their skin with cancer as a method of orangeitude. I seriously do not see the counterargument here, except basically blind repetition of stuff about libertarianism or small government. There's not even the tobacco excuse, namely that lots of current smokers are genuinely addicted so if you just eradicated cigarettes you'd leave a whole bunch of people stranded. People don't get physically addicted to tanning beds, they just get sucked up in the culture of fashion. It's terrible, and it must be stopped.