Experts predict Queensland's ban on tanning beds will force solarium industry "underground" Jo Ellice-Flint, who once regularly used tanning beds and survived a skin cancer, has warned people against using solariums. THE Newman Government's crackdown on tanning beds will create an underground solarium scene, operators say, with machines already lighting up in Queensland backyards. Commercial tanning beds will be banned in Queensland from late next year, with salons paid $1000 for their machines. But there is no obligation for businesses to take up the Government's offer. They can choose, instead, to sell them to private buyers in pursuit of higher returns. Backyard operators are already snapping up second-hand machines and offering tans to their friends. Health Minister Lawrence Springborg yesterday admitted there was little the State could do to stamp out non-commercial sunbeds and suggested it was something that needed to be tackled at a national level give it was a "far more challenging issue." "There are certainly people in the community, right around Australia, who do have their own tanning beds, that is a totally different issue and if something was needed to be done about that it would, I think, have to be done at a national level because there's a whole range of issues with regards to the commercial transactions of those," he said. Kos Sclavos, who owns three Brisbane-based Sun 7 Tanning Studio salons and employs 18 people, said "whole industry's going to go underground now." "All the equipment in Australia at the moment - mate, they're not going to go anywhere," he told The Courier-Mail. People will be running it in their backyards. I know people want to put (them) in shops where they're not even listed as a tanning salon and people just go there as a black market tanning machine. Illegal black market commercial operators will be hit with heavy penalties. Mr Sclavos said each machine cost him about $40,000, meaning he would rather "go down fighting" than accept a fraction of the initial spend. "What am I going to do with all this equipment, hand it back to them for $1000?" he said. To be honest with you, I'm not going to hand it back, I'll go to court. The operator of 13 years says he has already sold tanning beds to friends for private use. "In the last 12 months ... I've sold three of my machines to my friends," he said. Every one of them let their friends tan in there - they don't care about exposure, they don't care about if someone's under 18, they don't really monitor the systems. On eBay, Australian-based sellers are offering tanning beds for between $3000 and $4000. Mr Sclavos said he had also been fielding offers from interstate, where similar laws have driven the practice underground. "I'll tell you now, I've got 12 machines in my grandmother's garage, right, I already have offers from Sydney that people are going to buy them for their own house," he said. If I sell, send my equipment to Germany, even with freight, I'm going to get triple the money. But 34-year-old mum Jo Ellice-Flint believes anyone even considering the "ludicrous" idea of seeking out backyard solariums should think carefully about the very real risks of cancer. "With all the information, all the research out there, that is just ludicrous, but if people want to make those choices for themselves then what can you sort of do," she said. Ms Ellice-Flint began using solariums when she was 18, booking sessions up to 10 times a year for more than seven years. At age 27, she was diagnosed with a skin cancer, which needed to be removed from the right side of her face by a reconstructive surgeon, leaving her with 20 stitches, black eyes and eight months of numbness. "It was completely naive on my behalf that I didn't think there were risks - there were risks," she said. But I think the vanity side took over.