Want any illegal drugs?
I got herbs, I got E. Vitamin E, that is…

It’s not often you’ll find Corporate Watch calling for less regulation of industry, but on this occasion, strange though it seems, we think the European Union is going a bit far. Proposals currently being considered could see sales of high-dosage vitamin supplements banned, herbal remedies which have been on the market for years with no health worries suddenly forced to undergo the same expensive tests as new pharmaceutical drugs, and many other products currently classified as food or food supplements reclassified as medicines and forced to withdraw from the market or undergo expensive testing.

But why? Some regulation of the growing market for food supplements and alternative remedies is probably advisable, but these draconian restrictions are certainly not in the consumer’s interest. So who does want them? The key word here is ‘alternative’: natural health products are much used by people trying to avoid recourse to conventional drugs, which means the pharmaceutical companies making conventional drugs lose out. Unfortunately, these same companies have considerable lobbying power at the EU, through organisations such as the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries Associations (EFPIA), which means they can influence legislators to form these restrictive proposals, regardless of whether the new laws are actually necessary or, indeed, sensible. The record in other parts of the world should give the EU pause for thought: similar crackdowns in the US and Canada in the 1980s and 90s respectively - presumably responding to similar pressure from the pharmaceutical industry - collapsed due to consumer pressure and the waste of effort enforcement entailed.

This issue has so far received startlingly little mainstream press coverage, other than an excellent article in the Guardian in September (http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,790733,00.html) which gives details of the proposed legislation.

A campaign is being launched by Consumers for Health Choice (CHC - http://www.healthchoice.org.uk/index.htm) to prevent the directives becoming law. One word of warning, though: a quick look at CHC’s list of directors (http://www.healthchoice.org.uk/CHC%20About%20us.htm) reveals that it is basically run by the ‘natural health products’ industry, and is therefore probably best viewed as basically an industry lobby group - do not assume their interests coincide with the consumers.