Darque Tan—which has more than 90 salons in Texas, Colorado, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Arizona, Nevada and Florida—has created a new wave of advertisements featuring vitamin D.
In one advertisement, a man says, “Science has discovered that UVB from tanning converts cholesterol into vitamin D.” Then a narrator says, "Mmm, yeah, vitamin D-licious. Come get yours with a free week of level one tanning.”
In a second advertisement, a man in a lab coat says, "Getting the vitamin D you need has never been easier. To get just 4,000 IU, it takes 20 cans of sardines—mmm, good—or 40 glasses of milk, if you tolerate lactose. Better yet, get a full 4,000 IU of vitamin D in just five minutes in a tanning bed at Darque Tan.”
The ads have appeared on billboards and now air on Austin television stations. However, University of Texas law student, Emily Prewett, would like the advertisements discontinued, and has contacted Darque Tan owner, Robbie Segler. Because he did not agree to stop the advertisements, she filed a complaint with the Texas attorney general on April 18.
Prewett says she worries the ads may not be ethical because they do not warn viewers of potential health risks associated with tanning. Segler, on the other hand, indicated his belief that codes prohibiting a tanning company from making health claims violate First Amendment rights in an e-mail to Prewett.
Segler also wrote, "The laws that you so proudly flaunt in this instance are laws that prohibit free speech ... Why shouldn't indoor tanning be subject to the principle of free speech?"
In response to Prewett's support of the health code, Segler wrote, "If you were a lawyer living in the North in the 1850s, would you have returned runaway slaves to their Southern 'owners' in compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act?" He also asked Prewett if she would have supported genocide in Nazi Germany, or the modern-day, "beheading of apostates and the stoning of women for adultery."
Segler wrote that allowing the pharmaceutical industry to make health claims, while prohibiting people like himself, is an aberration "brought into existence by well-funded lobbyists pushing to silence tanning salons” and that “the link between melanoma and indoor tanning is non-existent.”
Doug McBride, a spokesman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, says that a tanning salon is considered to be used for cosmetic purposes and that such businesses cannot legally make a health claim, real or imagined. He also says that the department received a different complaint about advertising used by a Darque Tan facility in late February, and the department issued a warning letter to Darque Tan in early April. He said the department usually starts by sending out a warning letter. Actions might progress to the department demanding a fine from the facility or revoking its license.
Source: The Daily Texan
