IN 1994, President Bill Clinton and Senator Tom Harkin set off a supplement boom - by decreeing that supplements could be exempt from real FDA oversight as long as they didn't claim to cure cancer or kill anyone (which companies in that market continued to do anyway) and placed in small print that their supernatural claims were not validated by FDA.

That, plus wasting taxpayer money at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine(1) that could have gone to real research created a boom, to where woo and mysticism that claims it is sticking it to Big Pharma is a $40 billion per year industry.

Now, with marijuana legal for recreational use, it is also allowed to make supernatural claims like other supplements. The problem is that unlike worrying if 'Mercury is in retrograde', marijuana, like kratom, can be dangeous.(2)

FDA has denied three applications that use CBD because it is clear that long-term use can harm livers, but they know they can't really block CBD supplements forever because of President Clinton's Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. He loved fake medicine, he made supplement huckster Dr. Mark Hyman a household name, but the President who 'never inhaled' isn't in office now and President Biden claims to be on Team Science, so he will not force FDA to give cannabidiol a free pass until studies show it does nothing, like most supplements.

Since that is not the case, its harms and risks are known, FDA is saying Congress has to create a new pathway if they really want to make dangerous products exempt from oversight and only needing to meet minimum manufacturing standards. 


This 'organic' CBD garbage even contained unsafe levels of lead. That is what is takes to get a crackdown in the Wild Wild West of Supplement Land.

Will they do it? Democrats control the White House and half of Congress but it is no longer the 1990s, when they were the party of woo and believed agriculture was Frankenfood and vaccines caused autism. Since 2021 they have claimed to be pro-science when it comes to medicine, which means they can't give a free pass to placebos. 

You can't be on Team Science and be on Team Supplement, and never could. It is not a TheraFlu world now where it's harmless nonsense for the wealthy, those are the people promoting dangerous alternatives for COVID-19. Let's hope Congress makes the smart choice.

NOTES:

(1) Or folk medicine, traditional medicine, integrative medicine, conspirituality, it is all nonsense that sells placebos.

(2) It has always been dangerous to endangered species, since Asia loves to claim exotic animals have magical powers.