Meanwhile we have tattoo regulations in many countries – some are only focused on hygiene others include age regulation for getting pierced and tattooed or force licensing (event tests / exams) for opening a tattoo or piercing studio! But all of those regulations (so far) have ONE thing in common – they are poorly enforced. If you compare it to food regulation and checkups on restaurants and bars you’ll see that virtually nothing is happening. OK, there are more bars and restaurants than piercing and tattoo studios (although sometimes it does not feel like it) but still cities / counties and states could put more effords into it!

But there is hope – lately a scratcher in Edmonton, Canada has been put out of business (hopefully for the last time, since he already was known for beeing a dirtbag):

Tattoo artist receives big fine

Regulation and high fines seem to be a good thing to put “black sheeps” out of business but only on first look … if you really look at the situation it becomes obviouse that the real scratchers are not working legally and with no business running they would be not “touched” by business regulations. So … does it really help?

In my opinion it does but it is not enough! Still the key is customer education, so instead of keeping the topics tattoo and piercing out of school informations should be made available to everybody! Even if there will still be “idiots who feed the dirtbags”, it would have an impact on the situation because sooner or later you even reach those recless bastards and maybe they use the remaining parts of their brain to rething their enviroment and what they do to people … what do you think? Please comment!