The impact of indoor tanning legislation: newspaper coverage of the risks of indoor tanning before and after the California indoor tanning ban for minors.

On June 1, 2011, the California Senate passed a bill banning minors from indoor tanning. We aimed to determine whether the bill's passage was associated with longer-term media coverage regarding skin protection and the risks associated with indoor tanning. Articles from 31 English-language California newspapers between June 2010-May 2011 (PRE) and June 2011-May 2012 (POST) were searched using terms related to skin protection. Ninety articles were found for in-depth coding and analysis. There were more skin protection articles in the POST period than in the PRE period (57 vs 33; p < .05). In addition, there were more POST articles mentioning the risks of indoor tanning (33 vs 10; p < .001), and a POST article was more likely to mention the risks (58 vs 30%; p < .05). The higher number of POST articles mentioning the risks persisted throughout all quarters. Therefore, the California indoor tanning ban was associated with increased longer-term news coverage of skin protection and the risks associated with indoor tanning. This finding has potential influence on the many states that are considering comparable legislation.