Tell President Trump and Congress: Supplements Aren't Drugs!

The Trump administration has proposed moving food regulation from the Food and Drug Administration to the Department of Agriculture. The FDA would then become the Federal Drug Administration. (Read the full story here.)

Dietary supplements under federal law are legally food, so this should mean that both food and supplements would move to the Ag Department. But, alas not. Under the proposal, supplements would remain in the new Federal Drug Administration.

Catastrophe! How could the Trump administration make this mistake? Perhaps they just don’t know better. Perhaps they don’t even know that supplements are legally food, or that leaving them with drugs is disastrous for the supplement industry. We need to explain all this to the President and Congress without losing any time.

Write to President Trump and Congress and tell them that supplements aren't drugs, and should be regulated with food.

Recipients

President Joseph 'Joe' R. Biden
Your Senators
Your Representative

Contact

*Required fields

* Title:

* First Name:

* Last Name:

* Your Email:

* Address 1:

Address 2:

* City:

* State / Province:

* ZIP / Postal Code:

Country:

* Phone Number:

Yes, I would like to receive periodic updates and communications from Alliance for Natural Health USA.

Remember me. What's this?

Message

Supplements are food, not drugs

Dear [Decision Maker],

* Personalize your message

I was very concerned to see the proposal to reorganize the government, particularly with keeping supplements at the "Federal Drug Administration."

Moving food to the USDA and keeping supplements with drugs is not consistent with the law. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) created a separate system for the regulation of dietary supplements under the framework of food and apart from drugs. This was in recognition of the plain fact that supplements are 1) usually food-based, that is, composed of vitamins, minerals, herbs, or amino acids that can be found in food, and 2) overwhelmingly safe and do not pose the same dangers as pharmaceutical drugs.

The FDA has a conflict of interest in regulating supplements. It collects billions of dollars in user fees from the drug companies it is supposed to regulate. The agency is completely beholden to the drug industry--and yet is responsible for regulating the drug industry's competition, dietary supplements. This dynamic goes a long way in explaining why the FDA consistently targets dietary supplements. Either it tries to treat supplements like drugs as in the case of vinpocetine, since the agency gets more user fee money when a product goes through FDA-approval; or, if a supplement can't be patented and sold at exorbitant prices by Big Pharma, the agency moves to restrict the information that can be shared about the benefits of those products to make sure nothing can compete with the drugs that make money for the FDA.

There is an opportunity to further the goals of the government reorganization by moving supplements with food to the USDA. Not only does it cut down on the regulatory inefficiencies the administration is seeking to reduce; it would better serve public health by increasing access to quality dietary supplements and also further the US's position in global trade--an issue the President seems to care a great deal about.

Please move supplements with food out of the FDA and away from the influence of the drug industry

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[City, State ZIP]
[Your Email]