Canada To Ban 60% Of All Supplements! Act Now!

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The supposedly leftist Labour government here in the UK is considering something similar. i haven't been following the issue closely, but after reading this thread I think it's high time I did!

A lot of people, me included, depend heavily on vitamin and other supplements, or herbal products. They're already regulated, and you can buy standardized preparations in all the leading health stores and pharmacies. However, the government now wants to ban their sale as over-the-counter drugs (OTCs). So, in future, when I need to buy some vit B tablets I'll need a prescription from my GP (general physician). That means I'll have to convince him that I need that particular `medicine' and only then will he allow me to get it.

I think this is ridiculous. Big business is getting away with too much and not many people seem to care. It's a bit like DRM, but worse because this is people's bodies, their lives and health that are involved.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-05-28.html

I thought id post this article as its very critical of the stopc51 website. Im just showing this in the interests of balance - ive not weighed up both sides of the story up myself.

Exactly. That's how it always starts... something seemingly benign like standardization/regulating the doses. Then when people are used to that, they tighten it more so you can get them only by prescription. And considering how much doctors and big pharma feed on each other, it will be difficult to get a prescription for them when there is a nice expensive pharmaceutical they can prescribe you instead. I agree on DRM too. The mega-corporations are the new lords of the manor, and we are the new serfs. It's getting about time for a good old fashioned peasant uprising if you ask me.

Amen to that!!

How do we start?

My thoughts are that we should look to the open source software community for a blueprint on how to fight big business. There are some inroads to do the same thing with music and entertainment. I think employee-owned, democratically run corporations could be set up to compete in pretty much any industry. These can all be implemented at the grassroots level, and do not require the consent of those big corporations (or the governments they own). In fact, when successful, it will motivate them to clean up their own acts or be driven out of business due to superior competition. It has the wonderful side effect of bring about a fair redistribution of wealth and power without resorting to communistic/socialistic government measures.

And as for government, I wrote an extensive series of replies to the "losing faith with democracy" thread advocating direct democracy replacing our representative form of government that doesn't represent us any more. Switzerland is proof that it can work and be stable. If there were enough people demanding it, Constitutional amendments to implement this can be passed at the state levels and they would have no choice but to allow it (unless they want to go ahead and declare the Constitution null and void).

Those are my thoughts. If you can't work with the system, work around it, compete with it, and force it to reform or be replaced. It could be called political Darwinism. A better term might be cooperative individualism. But, it is the actual free market at work. That is real democracy. That is true progress.

It just requires enough ppl to get off their arses and get motivated.

Hm, going through the critiques of the wording.

First of all, all that is being required is that each package hold back any claims of any treatment unless what is being claimed has actually gone through clinical trials to prove their worth. That is, producers are packaging their products with claims that have not been proven to the Canadian food safety authority. It is a fundamental issue with regards to these products and the bill is no more complex than this to resolve this loophole and is exactly why this bill is being passed - so that we are not sold snake-oil or a placebo under the guise of a food product with health-benefit claims.

Secondly, I'm not trusting these supposed Consumer Watchdog sites as they are not established consumer watchdog sites and look all too contemporary for objectivity.

You aren't getting it - yes, things need to be regulated, I don't think anyone would argue with you there. But they are using that as an excuse to prosecute the very vast majority of people selling supplements - people don't have to be selling them to get caught up in it either - so that the pharmaceutical companies can maintain their monopoly on healthcare. Can you imagine having to get a prescription for vitamin C tablets? And that they'd be decent, natural ones in a bio-available form in a potency that will do you any good? These people have set the RDA as the minimum needed to prevent scurvy; not the level needed to keep you healthy. Doctors don't study nutrition or know the first thing about it - they know drugs. This is only the beginning and it's an extremely dangerous precedent - this bill has to be stopped.

As i like to say, We have become a greedy world, and greed could crash the world to non-existance

I suggest you actually read the bill and read is what is actually being proposed. You're only reading the Stopc51 website. The bill is not proposing any of what you or stopc51 is claiming.

Unless they change the wording of it so it's less ambiguous and open to interpretation, it can be taken as meaning exactly what the website is saying - and that's the problem. Whether or not that's their intention in the bill, it's how it can be taken and interpreted, and that's what's so dangerous. Even if the present govt don't have that intent, who's to say the next one won't? Or the next? And why won't they change the wording so it's clear and less open to interpretation?

Sure, regulate the products so they're safe, of course. But not in this guise.

(I should add, the stopc51.com site isn't the only one and it isn't the sole authority on the issue; it's simply a more cohesive and coordinated one than others. Do a google search and you'll find plenty of others with plenty of other information).

can you please provide any of the ambiguities in the bill?

I'm curious to know what exactly gets accomplished when someone signs an internet petition, except the obvious farming of email addresses for bulk emails... as far as i know, there is no such thing as a legally binding internet petition, so does anyone actually benefit from the signatures, aside from the aforementioned email marketers?