Happy New Year to all of our supporters, friends, allies and readers.
Now that the wrapping paper is gone and noisemakers are stowed, we wanted to send this very brief note looking back at (and forward to) a few issues relating to natural products, health and the environment.
First, there is general uncertainty as to whether the anti-over-regulatory winds in Washington will blow elsewhere in the U.S., especially in states such as New York and California, which have what some would call a hyper-regulatory, or nanny-state, posture in regards to many products, including dietary supplements.
In some cases, strong regulations can serve consumers well—such as with food safety and the environment. In other cases, such as with Prop 65 in California, excess caution paints virtually all products and materials with the “potentially carcinogenic” brush, benefiting no one.
As we enter the New Year, the U.S. Justice Department issued a directive that appears to effectively nullify states’ efforts to legalize marijuana. While we at CFH don’t take a universal position on this plant, as such, we do recognize the botanical’s vital importance for medicinal use. As for other applications, we believe it is up to the states to listen to their citizens, and that it is not up to the U.S. government as it stands on what it perceives to be a moral high ground and attempts to impose its view on all 50 states and all Americans, for that matter.
“In California, we decided it was best to regulate, not criminalize, cannabis,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. “Unlike others, we embrace, not fear, change.” This is an attitude that we can support, in this case and in general.
Second, regarding dietary supplements—on the plus side we have seen growing interest among natural product makers to use clean labels, labels with recognizable, more natural and often sustainable ingredients. Related to this trend is transparency, including such matters as country-of-origin labeling (COOL), which CFH actively supports.
Keeping products honest in all ways fortunately took on greater steam in 2017, and we have seen more clamp-downs on a handful of companies that spike their supplements with drug ingredients.
There has been robust discussion about kratom (an herb in the coffee family, Mitragyna speciosa) and its relative merits, which is good. However, scapegoating one botanical after another from the market under the guise of safety, as we saw with ephedra (Ephedra sinica) some years back, is never a good idea.
The movement to support local farmers, manufacturers, bakers, brewers – and, yes, even candlestick makers – is a welcome wave, although not new, as such. It is, in some ways, merely bringing us back to the days before cargo planes and high-speed trains started to blur the lines between what’s available when and where—in what seasons and in what climates.
Third, speaking of climate and our environment—in recent days we have seen that the U.S. is very close to allowing oil drilling in most U.S. continental-shelf waters, including protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic, which is of great potential concern to the integrity of our water and land, and the creatures who rely on them, including all of us.
As we look forward to the rest of 2018, we should encourage the companies whose products we like to maintain their commitment to values we care about and to continue to spread the word about how dietary supplements and natural medicine can help us achieve optimal health and make our lives better.
We sincerely thank you for being involved and for staying informed about the issues that impact our health freedoms.
Your participation is a critical part of our efforts to ensure that the flame of our collective dedication to natural health is never extinguished.
Yours in health,
James Gormley
Vice President, CFH
