Pending U.S. House Bill Will Limit Access to Nutritional Supplements
H.R. 3045 CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement comes before the House in the next few days, to the President within a week.
CAFTA has already passed the U.S. Senate on June 30 by an unusually close vote (for a big trade agreement) of 54-45. The vote in the House of Representatives is expected to come on Wednesday or Thursday, July 27 or 28, 2005.
The full name of CAFTA is CAFTA-DR, for “Central America-Dominican Republic Free Trade Agreement.” If approved by the House and signed by President Bush (who is a big supporter), it is estimated that more than 80% of U.S. consumer and industrial exports and over half of U.S. farm exports to the countries involved would become duty-free. The countries are the U.S., Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.
Support for, and opposition to, CAFTA is intense. Most Democrats and many “progressives” oppose it. But so do some elements on the right, including a number of Republicans and Libertarians. Most of the debate has been about the prospect of further U.S. job losses and the decimation of domestic industries like textiles, and the loss of national sovereignty to international trade organizations.
CAFTA will limit Americans’ freedom to access nutritional supplements.
CAFTA, along with NAFTA, GATT, activities of the United Nations’ (UN) WHO (World Health Organization), FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), and CODEX, is one of an alphabet soup of policies, programs, and highly bureaucratized and unresponsive international agencies that, in the context of an increasingly globalized one world economy, are coming together to change the way of life and impact personal freedom in individual nations, including the United States. As has become clear only recently, CAFTA represents a potentially serious threat to Americans’ (that is, residents of the United States’) ability to purchase nutritional supplements, especially at therapeutic (high) dose levels.
Kent Snyder, executive director of the Liberty Committee, issued an “action alert” on CAFTA and CODEX on July 13. In the alert, Snyder writes, “Will the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) finally force you to get a doctor’s prescription just to buy vitamin C, or E, or other dietary supplements you currently pick up ‘over the counter’ in America? Powerful special interests are banking on it.
“Since 1995, Big Medicine has spent billions of dollars trying to get Washington to regulate your dietary supplements just as European governments do. So far, that effort has failed in America. But you may lose the battle for health freedom if CAFTA entangles the U.S. in Europe’s infamous Codex Alimentarius (Codex).
“And if you think CAFTA — the bogus ‘free trade’ agreement — really has nothing to do with limiting the manufacture and distribution of dietary supplements, then why does it specifically mention Codex? . . .
“The pharmaceutical companies want government to ‘manage’ the dietary supplement industry under Codex in order to drive out competitors so only they can manufacture and distribute vitamin C and other dietary supplements. If that happens, as it already has in Europe, the supplements you now take will be available only by prescription and at a much higher cost — if they are available at all.
“We will fight CAFTA, NAFTA, WTO and the like because they subjugate our national sovereignty to the ‘rulings’ of global institutions and the whims of the unelected bureaucrats-for-life who run them. As this web of global governance grows, our freedom to choose shrinks — and health freedom is just one example.”
We at the Wellness Club are VERY worried about this – we believe that if this, and Codex passes you will no longer be able to obtain vitamins and supplements without a doctor’s prescription, and even with that prescription some supplements may be completely unavailable – prohibited, just like heroin! If this passes, it will drive most vitamin and supplement suppliers out of business – and with no one to supply the vitamins and supplements that you are used to taking, it won’t matter if you can get a prescription to buy them or not – you just won’t be able to get them at all, at any price.
Please think about what this means to you, to your health, to your family’s health. Contact your representative today and tell them that you won’t stand for this assault on your health freedoms!
Yours In Health,
Dr. Dana Myatt and Nurse Mark
