There are a few chicken little fear mongerers who are claiming that the Dietary Supplement and Non-Prescription Drug Consumer Protection Act (the “AER bill”), S. 3546, just passed by Congress, will somehow cut back on our ability to access nutritional supplements. These are the same crackpots who claimed Codex Alimentarus was going to do the same thing in January, July, August, September, October and December of 2004. Guess what? It didn’t happen. The fear mongers are looking for handouts and attention and care little about the truth.
The utter stupidity of their claims sounds more like conspiratorial theorists who claim alien domination of world governments. They claim that because the Natural Products Association, uses the same law firm as a couple of pharmaceutical companies, that they are nothing more than a front for Big Pharma. So I guess if you use a lawyer from a firm that defended a murderer, you too are implicated in that crime. Pretty pathetic argument wouldn’t you say?
The fact of the matter is, the nutritional supplement industry needed this bill to be passed to show that we can govern ourselves and protect the public from sham artists and other quacks in our industry. The bill simply states that in case of severe adverse reactions to supplements a reporting mechanism needs to be in place for the manufacturers of the products, not the retailers. For more details and the true story, go to the Natural Products Association website and learn what really is going on.