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Archives | (October 2002)
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DRUG RESEARCH A CORPORATE CON PART TWO (cont.)
------------------------------------------------------------------ Page 3 of 4 On February 23, 2003, the EU published draft regulations to implement the law. The draft regulations go into full effect in 2005. These new rules will be a deathblow to the dietary supplement industry in Europe. A brief review of just a few of them illustrates this point. For example, just as had been proposed in the 1997 proposed amendment to the Codex Alimentarius, one of the rules puts absolute limits on the potency of vitamins at levels far below those in common use. In the case of Vitamin C, for example, the limit is 300 milligrams (mg). Since many people take 2 to 3 GRAMS per day (eight to ten times as much), this would require that they ingest from eight to ten pills to take their normal dose. In the case of Vitamin E, the potency is limited to about one-eighth of what many people routinely take. Even then, they won’t be able to just walk into a store and purchase their vitamins. The reason is that as was the case with the 1997 Codex proposal, since the rules essentially classify vitamins as drugs, vitamins will only be sold through pharmacies, with a doctor's prescription! This is already a requirement in several countries including Norway, Germany and Greece, and by 2005 will be required everywhere in Europe. Still, it’s not just the limit on potency that is a problem. The rules would also emulate Germany’s proposed Codex amendment and ban a number of herbal supplements entirely. In fact, Ireland has already made St. John’s Wort illegal, and the European Union’s Scientific Committee on Food has declared that supplements such as Coenzyme Q-10, Bioflavanoids, and a wide range of amino acids are dangerous. This sets the stage for these supplements being banned as well. Under the rules, again as was proposed for the Codex in 1997, health claims for vitamins are specifically banned, whether or not there is a scientific basis for the claim. Therefore, dietary supplements may not be marketed as a preventative measure to protect against disease – no matter what the research says! In other words, the multinational opponents of dietary supplements who were thwarted in 1997 merely shifted the focus of their assault to the EU! But, what, you may ask, does an EU regulation have to do with vitamin sales in the United States? The short answer is more than you’d think. The reason is because the United States is a member of another international body called the World Trade Organization or WTO! In 1995, the United States and 134 other nations entered into the World Trade Organization Agreement. Ostensibly, the purpose of the WTO was to help manage international trade in an orderly fashion and eliminate trade barriers between nations – in essence to promote free trade. The fact that the WTO Agreement and its accompanying regulations comprised a document more than 22,000 – that’s right 22,000 pages – in length might have given a hint that it was really something quite different, especially if you read the fine print. |
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