Simon Chapman wants to buy your sunbed.

Buying into danger

Struggling solarium operators are offloading unwanted sunbeds online, prompting calls for a government buyback of the machines to prevent dangerous in-home tanning.
The powerful units are being sold for as little as $200 as the industry faces collapse owing to regulations restricting the use of solariums.

And here is the law of unintended consequences in full effect. Government intervention destroys an industry and throws people out of work, but the problem does not disappear, it simply moves somewhere else.

Totally unnecessary government intervention I might add. People are aware of the possible dangers of over using sunbeds. You pays your money, you takes your choice. There will always be one or two idiots who cannot look after themselves but to destroy an industry through excessive legislation because of them is the proverbial hammer and nut.

For people under the age of 35, using sunbeds - which emit ultraviolet radiation through fluorescent lamps - increases their risk of forming a melanoma by 98 per cent. There are fears a rise in the popularity of home sunbeds will lead to more cases of skin cancer as people tan without supervision.

And you didn’t see that coming when you brought in your raft of sunbed nanny laws? And I have to ask, 98 per cent of what? If you have a 0.01% chance of getting a melanoma, a 98% increase is still only a 0.0198 chance. If you have a 50% chance then a 98% increase is a lot more significant.

The scary percentages are meaningless without the raw data.

A professor of public health at the University of Sydney, Simon Chapman, said it would be a ''public service'' for state governments to buy the machines at the low market price and destroy them, or to outlaw reselling them.

Don't forget, it's 'public services' that taxes get thrown away on. Essential public services like this one. Destroying an industry then buying up it's machinery so nobody else can use it sounds like a worthy public service to me. Not.

''The biggest risks are for young people in their teens and early 20s. Because it's not a commercial premise you could use the thing as much as you wanted,'' Professor Chapman said. ''They're completely outside the reach of any regulation or inspection and that's a real problem.''

Of course muppets like Simon Chapman think any area of life that is outside the reach of legislation is a problem. People of his ilk make their living out of chirping for more regulation. Leaving people to make their own choices and learn from their own mistakes is beyond their imagination.

The chief executive of the Cancer Council NSW, Andrew Penman, urged consumers not to buy a tanning unit for home use.
''Private use is up to the discretion of the individual but private use in the home does not make it any more safe than use in a solarium,'' he said.

It would be just as safe if you use it wisely and don't camp out on the thing. Being in a government regulated environment does not make something safe, how it's used does, and if these sunbeds are used wisely at home then they will be fine.

There are a lot more powerful than the ones people are used to having at home, but as long as they use them the same as they would in a salon and are aware of the risks of over use, what is the problem?

But Mr Konemann [The former head of the Australian Solarium Association,] said a ban would not deter people. ''Solarium people won't go and get a spray tan. Most of them have used these machines for years. They know they get a good tan, they don't get burnt and it's convenient so they'll be snapping up these machines online.''

See.

In Victoria under-18s are banned from tanning salons and operators are forced to display health warnings or face $1 million fines.

A million dollars eh? Sounds proportionate.

Since the 2008 laws came in, the number of outlets has plummeted 67 per cent from 436 to 143 salons. Along with the NSW government's ban in 2014, many in the industry are offloading sunbeds on sites such as eBay, Gumtree and Trading Post.
The former head of the Australian Solarium Association, Mark Konemann, has sold two machines on eBay in the past fortnight for $1000 each. The buyers planned to use the sunbeds at home. ''Some of these beds are worth $15,000 to $20,000 and I've seen some online being sold for $500 or less,''

That sounds like an industry that has truly been screwed by it's government. Add to that, bars and restaurants, vending machine companies, tobacco companies and shortly brewers, plus all the other people and businesses that are involved in many ways.

However....

We are not to weep for those who have lost their jobs and livelihoods under the jackboot of the nanny state, for they are part of the problem.

Ian Paisley Jnr is not 'pro-smoking'. Just so we're clear on that. The politician is in a difficult position. Gallaher/Japan Tobacco International, or JTI as it's known, employs people in Paisley's constituency. Jobs! Must protect jobs. No matter what, jobs must be safeguarded. Doesn't matter whether those jobs directly contribute to the deaths of millions of people every year, they must be protected.

If you accuse the people who work in the tobacco industry, on any level, of being murderers, the argument about safeguarding jobs goes away quite nicely.

It can be (and no doubt will be) adapted for anyone who has lost their job because of the Public Health Industry. Bar staff and landlords are killing people with booze. Salon owners are giving skin cancer to kids. The possibilities are endless.

When is it socially unacceptable to do a certain job? Would someone somewhere do ANY job, just to have a job? Would you find someone willing to dangle babies over a cliff edge for entertainment, if he or she was paid to do it?

No holds barred this one. If you work in any area of the tobacco industry you are compared to someone who dangles babies over a cliff. Of course, as a Libertartian I am quite amused by babies dangling over cliffs.

 But that's why we have laws, isn't it? To impose a consensus about what's acceptable and what's not, on the general public.

No. Laws are supposed to protect people and property from actual harm, not from imagined harm created by the Public Health Industry and not from themselves. Laws have spiralled way out of control and that is wrong.

Demanding someone be thrown out of their job, any job, just because you don't approve of the transactions between consenting adults that they facilitate is also wrong.

So, we decided collectively that it wasn't ok to keep sending small children up chimneys. Did the MPs at the time rail against the new laws saying that such employment was necessary for their constituents who relied on the income from those children to drive the local economy?

What did it take for us to make the difficult decision to say 'No more'?

Maybe because the children who were being sent up chimneys were too young to decide for themselves if that is what they wanted to do. If it was adults who were going up chimneys then maybe they would never have been banned from doing it.
 
This is another example of a tobacco control stooge using an emotive and totally unrelated argument to make a point.

And when will we take it when it comes to cigarettes?

Never. hopefully. Because it is totally unnecessary. Cigarettes are made for adults by adults. That is nobodys business but the adults involved.

And it's not just tobacco is it?

I often wonder how people who profit from the sale of junk food and sweets etc sleep in their beds at night

However?

But, it can be argued, that the products themselves aren't inherently 'bad', it's only 'bad' if they're taken in anything beyond moderate doses.

But I don't think there's a single reputable person on the Earth who would argue that cigarettes are anything but 'bad'.

Then call me disreputable. I enjoy smoking cigars. Many other people enjoy using all kinds of tobacco products and wish to continue doing so. Enjoyment is a word that the Tobacco Control Industry simply can't understand though.

They don't contribute a single positive thing to a smoker. They may temporarily stop the craving for nicotine, but they aren't doing anything positive for a person's health.

I'm sorry but I wasn't aware that everything we do had to do something positive for our health. How many things must we ban now? Just because tobacco does not improve health is no argument for intervention in it's use.

Maybe plain packaging on fags isn't going to stop them being bought. Maybe it will make smuggling easier if all branding is removed. I don't know. But that's not the point.

Really? I thought that was the only point. Stopping the kiddies buying them. Now I'm baffled.

How can you say, 'I'm not pro-smoking', and then go on to defend an industry that makes billions in profit from cigs?

Because you're such a small minded knobhead that you have totally misunderstood what he is saying. I'm not pro smoking means he wouldn't personally advise people to take up the habit and he is not personally in favour of it.

He may be 'pro choice' though.

Politics isn't about being liked. It's about doing what's good. I'm sure the children who used to go up chimneys found other work eventually. You don't hear people lamenting the demise of the Under 10's Up The Flue brigades, do you?

Don't worry if you used to work in the hospitality industry, a sunbed shop or in a small newsagent. You'll find another job eventually. It's all for the greater good after all.

Smoking belongs in the past. God help people who are addicted, it's hard to give up. But that doesn't mean we should keep making the things and profiting from another generation's misery. And politicians who can't show principled leadership don't deserve to be public representatives.

Politicians who can't refrain from interfering in the private lives of the citizens who voted for them don't deserve to be public representatives.