Ethan A. Huff - Congress votes down Sen. Durbin's anti-supplement amendment, as well as Sen. Paul's freedom of health speech amendment

A sneaky, eleventh-hour attempt by Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to essentially shut down the supplement industry alongside an amendment pertaining to prescription drug user fees has failed. In a vote of 77-20, the U.S. Senate voted to table Amendment No. 2127, which would have created "duplicative, unnecessary, and unexpected new regulations" for the supplement industry that could have resulted in many common supplements being pulled from store shelves.

To the surprise of the entire natural health community, the unveiling of Amdt. No 2127 came late Tuesday afternoon, according to the Natural Products Insider (NPI), just one day before the bill to which it was attached, S. 3187, the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, was set for a vote. But because the natural health community immediately sprung into action to oppose Amdt. No 2127, it was successfully defeated.

"(Amdt. No 2127 is) based on the misguided presumption that the current regulatory framework for dietary supplements is flawed and that the FDA lacks authority to regulate these products," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Ut.) on the Senate Floor, in opposition to the amendment. He added that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA) already provisions the FDA with the tools it needs to properly regulate supplements, and that Amdt. No 2127 only "serves to punish all responsible companies with its overreaching mandates."

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