National Public Radio Weekend All Things Considered - Transcript
National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Weekend All Things Considered (8:00 PM ET) - NPR
HEADLINE: Despite ban on ephedra, government regulation of dietary supplements is limited by the DSHEA law
ANCHORS: STEVE INSKEEP
BODY:
INSKEEP: At least one senator is already looking-Democrat Richard Durbin of Illinois. He says the 1994 law explains why it took years for the government to ban ephedra even after it was blamed for some deaths. Durbin says it will be equally hard to police other substances.
Senator RICHARD DURBIN (Democrat, Illinois): And now we start all over again with all the testing and all the procedures, and years will go by and, sadly, many people will be harmed before protection is really there for consumers.
INSKEEP: How is it that ephedra was not classified as a drug in the first place?
Sen. DURBIN: Well, it was, and its chemical form, ephedrine, has been regulated for years. In fact, many, many years ago we banned the combination of caffeine and ephedrine. We said it gets your heart racing too fast, it's dangerous to some people. And then came the category called nutrition supplements, they started putting together combinations of caffeinelike substances and ephedra, which is the natural-occurring chemical, and they said this is a nutritional supplement, it's not an over-the-counter drug and, therefore, not subject to regulation. And with that little crack in the law, they built a multibillion-dollar industry and harmed thousands of people across America. Frankly, we're not only dealing with a dangerous product; we're dealing with a dangerous law. The DSHEA law, the Dietary Supplement Education Health Act, is basically an industry creation of several years ago which puts the burden on the government to prove that a product is dangerous.
INSKEEP: When you say a law has been written by the industry, what do you mean?
Sen. DURBIN: Well, what happened several years ago is the dietary supplementary industry came in at a moment in time when they had overwhelming majorities of the House and Senate and passed a revision of the law and said, 'We want to be able to sell our products without testing them in advance, without proving that they're either safe or they're effective for what we advertised,' and they managed to get that law through Congress and signed by the president. They had so many friends in high places that it, frankly, was a cakewalk.
INSKEEP: What gives them so many more friends than anybody else?
Sen. DURBIN: Money, campaign contributions, the fact that they have now become multibillion-dollar industries.
INSKEEP: It is interesting. We looked up some figures in the nutritional supplement industry and the amount that they contribute to different political parties and congressional campaigns and so forth and that figure is in the millions, but it is dwarfed by other industries like the traditional pharmaceutical industry which contributes tens of millions. What makes their money go such a long way?
Sen. DURBIN: Well, I think because they can rally a lot of people who feel very passionately that they want the right to buy the things that they think are good for their bodies. Now I don't disagree with that premise. I think it's a good premise. I took my vitamin this morning, I do every morning, and I'm glad I have the choice to make and I don't need a prescription for it. But as one of my colleagues said in the House, 'It isn't a question of whether you can sell snake oil in America. Basically, you can. It's a question of whether you can sell snake venom,' and that's what's happening here with some of these lethal combinations.
INSKEEP: Senator Richard Durbin's view is challenged by representatives in the nutritional supplement industry. Industry groups say that responsible companies want regulation by the FDA. They've agreed to put warning labels on some products, and they say they welcome the government's banning of unsafe substances as long as the government meets that very high standard of proof under the 1994 law.