The indoor tanning community has successfully fought off Teenage “Tan Ban” proposals in three states this winter, with under-18 ban proposals in New Hampshire, Washington and South Dakota all going down in the past few weeks.

The Indoor Tanning Association reported this weekend that the South Dakota Senate voted down a would-be under-18 tan ban by a 30-2 vote. The senate also voted 25-9 against adding supplementary regulations on indoor tanning in the state. ITA reported that tanning business owners in South Dakota, including Pat Chedester of Tan World and Denny Neugebauer, of Year Round Brown, traveled to Pierre several times to educate legislators on why the bills were unnecessary and counterproductive.

A tan-ban bill in New Hampshire went down by a 16-1 vote in late January in a New Hampshire committee meeting after salon owners, led by Dana Pierce and Bob Ashe, led an effort against the bill. ITA engaged outside counsel to coordinate the effort, and Smart Tan’s Joe Levy added testimony and science to refute claims made by New Hampshire dermatologists who lobbied for the bill. The coordinated effort worked: In the end, even some of the bill’s co-sponsors voted against the tan ban.

Another effort in Washington state failed this week when the legislature declined to move on a tan-ban bill, thereby taking it off the calendar for the year.

ITA says there 27 regulatory proposals pending in different states – including a battle in Maryland, where the state legislature just introduced a teenage tan-ban bill. The ITA is calling for assistance from all tanning business owners to mount effective campaigns against the over-the-top legislation.

A tanning industry veteran in Omaha was published in the Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday, responding to a dermatology-inspired anti-tan article in the same newspaper just a week ago, Tracie Cunningham, executive vice president of Ashley Lynn’s Tanning, an Omaha-based chain, convinced the World-Herald to run her response as an Op-Ed story.