Vitamins Are FDA-Regulated

Contrary to popular myth and The Healthy Skeptic (LA Times 3/1/10), the federal FDA (Food and Drug Administration) already regulates dietary supplements such as vitamins, minerals and herbs. These are NOT “unregulated” products. What actually makes critics’ teeth grind is the fact that vitamin formulas do not need specific pre-approval from the federal regulators, which is the true endgame of many skeptics. But all ingredients used in nutritional supplements before mid-October of 1994 are already pre-approved by the FDA under an often-misrepresented law called DSHEA, which also requires all new dietary ingredients to be submitted to the FDA for pre-market review before a product is sold. This gives the agency a chance to review the required submission of safety and efficacy data before any new ingredient can be sold, and the power to veto its introduction.

Dietary supplement manufacturers are already required to submit label claims along with scientific documentation to the FDA, but are paradoxically required to use a label disclaimer that the agency has not evaluated the formula. Vitamin makers are already registered with the government, are already prohibited from making medical/drug claims for dietary supplements, and are already required to identity-test and list all ingredients on product labels. A recent adverse event reporting law promptly lets the FDA know of virtually any problem requiring medical attention in order to trigger recalls and new label warnings. Under DSHEA, the FDA can regulate the manufacture of all dietary supplements, an oversight that was dramatically improved over the past 3 years with the rollout of mandatory Good Manufacturing Practices. Obviously, this is not an “unregulated” industry, even if enforcement can be improved in some areas.

Advocates of pre-approval of dietary supplement formulas want to import a highly flawed and controversial Canadian health care program in a misguided effort to give our own unelected government bureaucrats absolute power over already-regulated vitamin products. Many Canadians now cross the border to buy American supplements because their own government arbitrarily delays entry of new products for years at a time, miserly approving only 42% of products that have been submitted with all of the required safety and efficacy documentation. This is not a free market model, does not work well, and is not worth copying.

A permanent government takeover will strangle a preventive health industry that, in America’s free market, has added jobs and exports during our recent recession. Vitamins help Americans meet basic nutritional needs in a cost-effective manner without government funding; and probably decreased some Medicare spending, according to the conclusions of authoritative Lewin Group reports. There is a complex regulatory structure for vitamins and other dietary supplements in the U.S. that is working quite well; there were ZERO deaths officially reported from these products last year even though about 2/3 of Americans use them. Claims that “vitamins are unregulated” are woefully inaccurate and should not be published by news outlets with competent fact checkers.

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-0301-skeptic-20100301,0,2486837.story