Uncle Sam Wants Your Vitamins!

While Americans continue to fight the government takeover of our health care, Senator John McCain announced his plan for the government to regulate all dietary supplements. His Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 calls upon the FDA to regulate dietary supplements as if they are drugs. The language is so sweeping that the FDA would have a free hand to regulate all food products, which are manufactured to supplement nutrition.

Why is McCain doing this? Who benefits? The two biggest beneficiaries are large dietary supplement companies that already have a foothold in the market place and can afford the costs involved in meeting the proposed new standards and pharmaceutical companies who don’t want competition from alternative medicine claims.

Under the provision of the bill, new supplements may be arbitrarily banned by the FDA or adopted by drug companies in a way that would stop them from being sold as supplements at a lower price. The FDA’s relationship with the drug companies is very cozy since they pay its bills.

McCain and his co-sponsor are concerned about the harm the unregulated dietary supplement market is causing. More people are harmed from legal and illegal drugs than they are from supplements. This bill, which overturns some of the protections of a 1994 bill, will only create a black market for vitamins and other supplements. The “war on drugs” will expand to include you, your aging parents, and grandparents.

The Vision to America team is suspicious. Thousands of people die each year waiting on the FDA to approve life-saving drugs. And when the FDA does approve a drug, have you noticed all the risk factors you are warned about? No drug is perfect. Do we really want this bureaucracy telling us what multivitamins or fish oil capsules we can take? Enough is enough. Senator McCain ought to know better.

Let your Senator know where you stand on yet another government intrusion into our private lives by signing our petition to keep Uncle Sam’s hands off our vitamins!