Tell New York Legislators to Oppose These Dangerous Anti-Supplement Bills!

The New York state legislature is considering two new bills that could have a devastating effect on supplements.

The first bill (S.3650 and A.4700) will establish a Dietary Supplement Safety Committee that would create a system for adverse event reports; assess data and make recommendations to ban whichever nutritional supplements it deemed harmful; and establish a public health education campaign on dietary supplements. Most dangerous of all, the health commissioner would have the ability to ban supplements as recommended by committee.

The second bill (SB.4151) would require that sport supplement manufacturers and distributors give every customer a pamphlet that discloses whether the product has been banned by certain sports leagues and anti-doping agencies, and it would also ban all sports supplements from being sold to people under age 18—but the bill excludes supplements in liquid form, as well as supplements containing caffeine like the five-hour energy drinks, which are the ones responsible for much of the controversy over supplements in the first place!

Both bills are badly written and extremely biased against nutritional supplements. Ask your state senators and assemblypersons to oppose them.

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Dear [Decision Maker],

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I was shocked to learn that the New York state legislature is considering two new bills that could have a devastating effect on supplements.

The first bill (S.3650 and A.4700) will establish a Dietary Supplement Safety Committee that would create a system for adverse event reports (AERs), which is completely unnecessary since this already exists on a national level! The FDA collects AERs for dietary supplements, which manufacturers are required by law to submit. Consumers are encouraged to submit AERs to FDA. Making an additional state-level requirement will impose a greater burden on manufacturers, with absolutely no additional benefit to consumers.

This committee would also make recommendations to ban whichever nutritional supplements it deemed harmful, and give the health commissioner the ability to actually ban them, undermining the hard-won national regulatory system for supplements under DSHEA, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which was enacted to encourage access to nutritional supplements. Creating a "negative" list of supplements at the state level directly contradicts the process outlined by DSHEA and brings us one step closer to a system of approved vs. non-approved supplements. There are 409 times more serious AERs for FDA-approved drugs than for nutritional supplements, so why are supplements being singled out?

The second bill (SB.4151) would require that sport supplement manufacturers and distributors give the customer, with every sports supplement sold, a pamphlet that discloses whether the product has been banned by certain sports leagues and anti-doping agencies, and whether it has any known negative adverse effects or known herb/drug interactions. The bill would also ban all sports supplements from being sold to people under age 18.

While I am strongly in favor of consumer disclosure and transparency, this bill is badly written. Illogically, the bill excludes supplements in liquid form, as well as supplements containing caffeine like the five-hour energy drinks, which are the ones responsible for much of the controversy over supplements in the first place! This bill could be used as a hammer against the supplement industry in general, putting more power over supplements into the hands of biased state agencies.

Supplements have a remarkable track record of safety, and such state regulations do nothing to increase it -- they would only diminish access. Please OPPOSE both S.3650/A.4700 and SB.4151.

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

Protecting Natural Health