§ 772-1. Legislative intent.

A. 

This Legislature hereby finds and determines that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and numerous leading United States health-care organizations estimate that approximately 1,000,000 Americans each year will be stricken with skin cancer, a potentially deadly disease, and the most common of all types of cancers.

B. 

This Legislature also finds and determines that melanoma is more common than any non-skin cancer among women between 25 and 29 years of age. Nationally, one person dies of melanoma every hour.

C. 

This Legislature further finds and determines that the FDA, joined by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and numerous leading United States and international health-care organizations, discourages the use of tanning beds and sunlamps, and has concluded that indoor tanning can be as harmful as outdoor tanning, and that perhaps more than 1,000,000 people in the United States alone visit tanning salons each day on the average.

D. 

This Legislature finds that tanning devices in salons, tanning parlors, spas, and similar settings that emit mostly UVA light are in no way less harmful alternatives to the sun's rays, insofar as UVA rays penetrate deeper than UVB rays, causing damage to the underlying connective tissue as well as to the skin's surface.

E. 

This Legislature determines that currently there is no repair treatment available for reversing the brutal effects of UVA and UVB rays on the skin, and that basic, minimally intrusive, public education to prevent such damage before it occurs is the best approach to maintaining public health of the citizens of Suffolk County.

F. 

This Legislature also finds that the patronizing of tanning facilities has become increasingly popular among teenagers and young adults who are a vulnerable segment of our society in that they are unaware of the long-term risks and health effects of repeated use of these facilities.

G. 

This Legislature further finds that the Colette Coyne Melanoma Awareness Campaign began in 1998 in response to the death of an exceptional thirty-year-old woman named Colette Marie Brigid Coyne, who contracted melanoma at an early age. The Colette Coyne Melanoma Foundation is dedicated to increasing public awareness regarding the dangers and causes of skin cancer and to changing attitudes and behaviors towards unsafe tanning and sun exposure. The Foundation has begun to achieve these goals through the education of parents and children in our schools, public recreational facilities and community-based organizations.

H. 

Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to regulate the use of tanning facilities by persons under 18 years of age.