…have to do with finance regulation?
One of the Dems I’d love to see get booted out this November is Henry Waxman. Unfortunately, some of the most destructive politicians (e.g., Waxman, Frank) are in the safest seats. That’s not a coincidence, of course. The safer your seat (or at least the perception of safety), the more outrageous the behavior.
From the article:
Waxman seems to believe the dietary supplement industry should be regulated like the pharmaceutical industry. The language he wants in the bill can be used to get around the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), the legislation that governs dietary supplement regulation by the FDA. The new language would give new powers to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), allowing it to circumvent key supplement protections in DSHEA.
It gets complicated wading through how these regulations work, and what falls under what agency’s jurisdiction. Here’s the bottom line: The mainstream healthcare industry — from big pharmaceutical companies to insurance groups to physicans’ associations — are not fans of supplements and natural health approaches. It’s bad for their botton line, and so they lobby to get them regulated out of existence.
I get the impression that Waxman and his ilk believe nothing should be outside the scope of federal regulation. However, there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in the “dietary supplement” business. While I’d like to see some actual proof of their effectiveness and safety, the costs of actually testing their products and meeting quality standards would likely put a lot of the supplement manufacturers out of business.
This kind of thing also shows how so many things unrelated to a piece of legislation’s primary purpose gets tucked into the bills. How many of these gotchas do you think reside in the 2000+ page healthcare legislation?
I think the state can regulate anything they damn please. If anything they have the means to do it if they wanted to.
Yet I think this extra regulation of the dietary supplement business is nonsense. I think at best you can enforce that the people selling these things are actually putting inside the boxes what is written in the labels. Trying to regulate effectiveness and safety beforehand just means a lot of expensive human test trials. Which means only really large supplement manufacturers could remain in business.
Thinking a few steps down the line, what would happen to radio and television companies (and even some websites) if the supplement companies were regulated out of existence?
The times that I listen to the radio (which, I found out from a recent participation in a radio journal program, is only a few horus a week), the majority of the ads are for snake-oil peddlers of all ilks, from debt-reduction to anti-virus to auto warranties. Adspace on websites seem to be taken up by diet supplement and tooth whitening companies these days.
These high-profit, low-value companies are pretty much keeping ad-based businesses afloat.
Or would something like that be a feature, rather than a bug?
This bastard (Waxman) has no business messing with my supplements. I want this bastard stopped now. Unfortunately, this prick does come from a “safe” district.