Ephedra was only the beginning: FDA to ban steroids and their "precursors"

A bill before congress H.R. 207 proposes to ban (read: regulate by prescription) steroids and substances the body uses to make steroids. This would include not only anabolics used by professional and nonprofessional athletes and bodybuilders, but also many common herbs used by ordinary people for centuries and by other cultures to boost hormone levels.

(PRWEB) January 24, 2004 --In a letter from WI Congressional Rep Paul Ryan of WI (rep) to the author states:

"Currently, in the United States there are a plethora of steroid precursors being marketed as steroid equivalents by supplement manufacturers. A number of variations on these basic steroid precursors have entered the U.S. market in recent years. The United States Anti-Doping Association (USADA), the independent national anti-doping agency for Olympic sport in the United States, is extremely concerned about the anabolic steroid precursors that are being sold over the counter as dietary supplements. These steroid precursors metabolize in the body into anabolic steroids that are regulated by the Controlled Substances Act, yet the steroid precursors remain unregulated. Although consumers frequently use these supplements innocently, the steroid precursors pose a public health concern by athletes who abuse them. H.R. 207 addresses this issue by expanding on concepts already contained in the Controlled Substances Act, which allow the Attorney General to add immediate precursors of controlled substances to the controlled substances list. The legislation makes it clear that the Attorney General can use the immediate precursor provisions in the Controlled
Substances Act to add steroid precursors to the controlled substances list and make sure that they are regulated in the same way as the anabolic steroids that they are converted into by the body. Currently, H.R. 207 is pending in multiple House committees for review.

What this bill will do besides banning oral and injectable steroids and precursors used by athletes and body-builders, it will also ban common herbal supplements like ginseng, damiana, suma, saw palmetto, licorice root or virtually any substance the body uses to make testosterone in the body. It fails to take into consideration that the average american isn't an olympic, professional athlete-for-hire and shouldn't be held to the policies of a few professional organizations whose athletes' choose to "cheat" (by their definitions, i.e. augment their performance) at competitions, especially when the supplements do what they're supposed to.

More sinsister is it allows doctors to enter the fray with their opinions, at which point a drug company can pay to have a negative report published on any given substance (i.e. natural diuretics) to have them banned. Once the ban takes effect the substances are then only available through doctors and drug companies. It is a back-door coup to appropriate the products and profits of the dietary supplements industry by the pharmaceutical lobby. This works in with UN/WTO Codex agendas, crafted by major drug companies, where any supplement or substance purveyor making health claims is taxed and those products made available only by prescriptions. Also for purposes of "fair trade" harmonizations, sellers are only permitted to offer the lowest possible and common dosages (RDA) which in case of vitamin C is 10 times less for humans than laboratory monkeys. The Controlled Substance Act will permit swat teams to go after vitamin sellers (it has already happened in countries like the Netherlands, Germany and Canada who signed into the WTO) selling over the approved dosages. Little old ladies and athletes will become felons for what they keep in their medicine cabinet, and even worse for natural folk who choose vitamins and herbs over drugs. Readers are encouraged to write their Congressmen to prevent the worst from happening and losing their rights to freely buy and use natural foods, herbs and dietary supplements.

The term "precursors" is so broad as to revert back to basic foods like seeds, corn, beans and cabbage. It puts a private and capricious group of drug companies-for-profit in control of what foods and supplements Americans should have access, through a parental association of doctors (AMA) and at whatever price the market will bear.