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Last week I went to New York to tape a segment with Dr. Oz on multivitamins.  It’s scheduled to air on Monday, February 10th. You can find the channel and time it airs in your area by going to a link on The Dr. Oz Show and entering your zip code.

It was only a ten minute segment so there wasn’t enough time to discuss the false and often repeated quote stating that dietary supplements are unregulated.

This is patently false, and you only have to look at the very first sentence on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Website1 to settle that dispute. There, it plainly states:

“FDA regulates both finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients. FDA regulates dietary supplements under a different set of regulations than those covering ‘conventional’ foods and drug products. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA):

  • FDA is responsible for taking action against any unsafe dietary supplement product after it reaches the market.”
  • Should Supplements Be Regulated Like Drugs?

    Dr. Paul Offit and others want supplements to be regulated

    like drugs, ostensibly to ensure their safety and effectiveness. But are drugs really safer? Prescription medications kill over 100,000 people each year when properly prescribed, while vitamins have not caused a single death in 27 years.

    If the motive is safety, as they claim, wouldn’t they start with the products that are the MOST dangerous and kill the most people? Zero deaths over 27 years is certainly not a good starting point! Painkillers alone kill 23,000 Americans each year. And Vioxx, created by Merck, was responsible for over 60,000 deaths before being pulled off the market. That was just ONE drug approved by the FDA as “safe.”

    As for counterfeit supplements, yes, some illegal products do enter the market, but so do counterfeit drugs. So does the existence of illegal or counterfeit drugs indicate a lack of drug regulation? See, there’s a difference between regulation and

    enforcement.

    We have all the regulations we need, and many we created for industry instead of consumer benefit. If anything is lacking, it’s the enforcement of the regulations already in place, both for drugs, foods, and supplements. Although a case could be made that enforcement is perhaps greater when it comes to supplements than drugs.