The Alberta government met Monday afternoon to discuss details about Bill 22, the Skin Cancer Prevention Act.
The new legislation bans artificial tanning businesses from providing services to minors.
Stephen Mandel admitted that he is confident that the bill will be passed soon.
“We hope tomorrow night before we go home, this will be passed.”
The tanning industry has started to take steps, the association that represents the majority of Canada’s salon banned under 18 tanning in July 2014.
“We’ve been very open and willing to work with the government to make sure we get the legislation to make sure it’s going to do what it’s designed to do, make sure we don’t over expose people with a skin type 1 and don’t tan people under the age of 18,” said Mat Rockey, President of Fabutan.
Bill 22 will:
- Ban businesses from selling or providing artificial tanning services to minors
- Prohibit advertising of artificial tanning directed to minors
- Mandate health warning in artificial tanning facilities and on advertising materials
- Prohibit unsupervised, self-service artificial tanning equipment in public places
"The Skin Cancer Prevention Act is a major step forward in the effort to reduce rates of melanoma in our province. It includes several strong measures that will reduce young people’s chances of getting skin cancer at some point in their life,” said Health Minister Stephen Mandel in a press release.
On December 1, 2014 Health Minister Stephen Mandel said there will be tanning bed legislation introduced in the spring of 2015, however no further details were released.
Nine Canadian Jurisdictions have already banned minors from using artificial tanning equipment.
Alberta and Saskatchewan are currently the only two provinces without tanning bed legislation.
With files from Carmen Leibel
