New Mexico Environment Board Delays Aspartame Hearing

January 4, 2006
The New Mexican
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/37254.html
State Board Unanimously Delays Aspartame Issue
By Diana Heil

Diabetics and diet-soda drinkers need not fret that New Mexico will ban sugar-substitute products anytime soon.

In a unanimous vote Tuesday, the seven-member state Environmental Improvement Board decided to wait for Attorney General Patricia Madrid’s opinion on whether the board has the authority to outlaw or put warning labels on products that contain aspartame .

The board proclaimed in October that it had the necessary powers. Then on Nov. 9, the board asked in writing for the AG’s opinion. The board has not received an answer.

The board Tuesday postponed the five-day hearing originally scheduled for July 2006. It's now slated for January 2007.

Stephen Fox, a Santa Fe gallery owner, is leading the effort to ban this Federal Drug Administrationapproved substance, with some local medical doctors at his side. Fox says new research suggests aspartame is a toxin that can cause harm to human health.

He said the sugar substitute is found in 6,000 products, ranging from diet drinks to cough drops.

“I fear for the 70 percent of adults and 40 percent of children who consume this product, not knowing it turns to formaldehyde and other toxins ,” Fox said after Tuesday’s meeting.

After meeting with Gov. Bill Richardson last month, Fox said he feels assured the hearing will happen eventually. Fox said he will step up his mission to educate the public about aspartame, now that “New Mexico has to wait another year for this poison to be removed from the market.”

Meanwhile, Ajinomoto USA Inc., a leading manufacturer of aspartame, and the Calorie Control Council of Atlanta, a low-calorie , food-industry trade group, continued to defend the sweetener as a thoroughly tested, safe substance that benefits people worldwide . The popular sweetener is sold under the brand names of NutraSweet and Equal.

“We are pleased the board will get the AG’s opinion before proceeding,” said Albuquerque attorney Richard Minzner, a former state representative. Ajinomoto has hired him along with another law firm in Washington, D.C.

Minzner said the Environmental Improvement Board — which the New Mexico Legislature established in 1978 to handle rules on the state’s food and water supply, liquid waste, air quality and radiation control — is outside its bounds.

“The FDA has full authority in this area, and the states have been preempted ,” he said.

And even if that were not the case, Minzner said, the state Legislature has not given the EIB, or any other body, the authority to regulate products in the way proposed by Fox. As it stands, that power only lies within the Legislature , Minzner said.

If New Mexico found a way to become the first state in the country to ban aspartame, it must consider the practical effect of such a decision, Minzner told the board Tuesday. He asked if Indian reservations would be able to sell these products; whether surrounding counties in Texas, Colorado and Arizona would snap up the shoppers; and whether sales over the Internet would meet the demand.

Contact Diana Heil at 986-3066 or
dheil@sfnewmexican .com.

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Stephen Fox Comments:

As the Aspartame Petitioner, I am optimistic about the eventual outcome of
efforts to ban aspartame, particularly in light of the conclusive Italian
study from the Ramazzini Foundation which can be found at
http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_study_14july2005.pdf

This is posted on the National Institute of Health's website! I have spoken
at length with US Senator Jeff Bingaman about this neurotoxic and
carcinogenic artificial sweetener over the last few years, and after the
EIB's decision on October 3, he stated that he was going to be writing the
Commissioner of the FDA about aspartame.

If Senator Bingaman and/or Congressman Udall on the Floor of the Senate or
the House were to mention this report is posted on the NIH website and ask
the members to read it, the USA Congress would be shocked at first to
discover the now proven neurotoxicity and carcinogenicity of this product
found in at least 6000 food products, and over 500 children's medications!

Someone in the Congress, hopefully Bingaman and Udall, should ask for a ban
of the product by requesting the FDA to rescind its approval. Such rescinding
of FDA approval occurs frequently with medications whose toxic effects are
discovered too late, after several or many people have died. President Nixon
order the FDA to rescind the approval for cyclamates, another artificial
sweetener. On December 14 in the UK Parliament, an MP from Wales, Roger
Williams, called for a complete ban on aspartame in the UK.

As to the New Mexico statutes on poisonous and deleterious food additives, as
well as the power for the Environmental Improvement Board to get rid of them,
these are delineated in the New Mexico Food Act, NM 25- 1-3 through NM 25-1-
13. The Supreme Court Library can email these statutes to you directly, if
you want to read them, as well as the Pharmacy Board statutes.

The authority of the EIB to promulgate rules regarding Consumer Protection
and Food Quality are also clearly delineated in the Environmental Improvement
Act, the law that created the EIB.

Ajinomoto’s lawyer, Richard Minzner, a former Majority Leader of the NM
House, seemed to purposefully confuse the EIB about these statutes. He also
stated to the reporter from the New Mexican newspaper that food quality is
outside the EIB's bounds. Minzner needs to read those statutes more
carefully, as well as inform his client, Ajinomoto of Japan, the world's
largest manufacturer of Aspartame and of Monosodium Glutamate, another
neurotoxic additive, that they have erred in their hasty perusal of NM
statutes.

There is nothing in the law that created the FDA in 1937 which expressly or
impliedly preempts a state from protecting its citizens by examining an FDA
approved product when the medical evidence clearly warrants doing so. There
is plenty of room for states to regulate the field of food additives. Just
read the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution!

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
to the people."

At the November 14 meeting of the NM Pharmacy Board, Minzner stated that he
and his client were contemplating litigation against both the EIB and the
Pharmacy Board. board. This threat, which I relayed to the Attorney General
and to the Deputy Attorney General, was enough for several lawyers in the
A.G.'s office to advise the EIB to go into a private, non-public "Executive
Session" The threat of a lawsuit is one of the circumstances in the Open
Meeting Act which allows non-public meetings, yet Minzner withdrew his threat
and stated to KUNM and to the Albuquerque Journal on January 3 that he never
made such a threat of litigation!

Concerned consumers who shouldn’t have to wait another 12 months for the EIB
to even commence hearings on aspartame's neurotoxicity; there is excellent
truthful information at http://www.wnho.net, www.dorway.com, and the website
for the Aspartame Toxicity Information Center in Concord New Hampshire.

Regrettably, the EIB was informed at their December 3 meeting by their
counsel, Asst. A.G. Zack Shandler, that they could not even be given the
letters sent to them by:

1. Dr. H.J. Roberts, M.D. author of Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic,
the foremost medical expert in the USA on the clinical neurodegenerative
effects of aspartame hjrobertsmd@aol. com [Rejecting Dr. Robert’s
letter is like refusing to read Einstein’s letter if the subject were
Relativity, or Dr. DeBakey’s testimony if the subject were Heart Surgery]

2. Betty Martini, Director of Mission Possible International and of
http://www.dorway.com

3. Mark Gold, Founder, Aspartame Toxicity Information Center mgold@tiac.net

If YOU as a parent or as a consumer of manufactured food products, want to
read the above letters about Ajinomoto’s efforts in other states in its
efforts to silence hearings on aspartame, and the collusion of aspartame
manufacturers and corporate users of this product, they are posted at
www.wnho.net

If you want to see the A.G. give a written Opinion about the state's powers
to protect its citizens rather than her Assistant A.G's doing so secretively
in non-pubic meetings, please ask your legislators and the Governor to ask
Patricia Madrid for a formal A.G.'s opinion, since only elected officials can
request a formal Opinion. A New Mexico Board can not do so.

The six month delay approved by the EIB yesterday October 3 is horrific in a
toxicological sense. What if it were straight formaldehyde or mercury or
asbestos or lead in the food that we were trying to get banned from your food
or your child's medicines? Might waiting six extra months seem reprehensible
to you?

I initiated the effort to ban aspartame by the EIB in June, 2005. That will
mean a 19 month wait, IF they convene a hearing in January 2007. Surely the
Governor and the Legislature can achieve this sooner?

Stephen Fox

verification: 217 W. Water St. Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
[505] 983-2002
stephen@santafefineart.com