Do any of you think having FDA control over the supplement market by testing the products to be sure that they work and aren’t hazardous? I think we should because everything would be so much better without a bunch of stupid supplements on the market. Another advantage of this would be that none of the supplements would be banned or made illegal by some paranoid politician, because the FDA would know its effects. What do all of you think? Just trying to do my part to make sure we have controversial and interesting topics to talk about.
It would seem that that would be extremely expensive for the supplement companies.
I think having the FDA test to ensure that the supplements meet label claims would be a very good idea. However, I believe that should pretty much be the extent of FDA oversight. The problem with having the FDA ensure that the supplements in question aren’t hazardous lies in the many definitions of hazardous. Ephedra was banned for being hazardous to people too dumb to accept that the directions on the label apply to them. By my standards, ephedra’s a safe product because it’s generally safe if you follow the directions on the label.
The less the FDA does the better off we all are. The supplements that really work will be banned to protect drug company profits. Or one supplement company could pay off the FDA to rule another company’s product does not work.
The FDA is funded to a large extent by the user fees that drug companies pay to have their products tested. I’m guessing the fees would be too high for a lot of smaller companies to keep operating.