ACP’s Supplement Crackdown Would Put FDA Between You and Your Vitamins

What ACP Is Demanding

The American College of Physicians (ACP) released a new position paper in Annals of Internal Medicine calling for Congress to “modernize” the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). ACP wants supplements to undergo FDA registration and premarket approval, including products already on the market. It also calls for more Federal Trade Commission (FTC) policing of supplement marketing.

ACP says its recommendations are needed because more than half of American adults use supplements, while only about a quarter use products recommended by a healthcare professional. ACP also argues that some products may contain unlisted ingredients, unsafe dosages, illicit substances, or interact with medications.

No one at ANH-USA is defending adulterated products, hidden drug ingredients, false labels, or fraudulent disease claims. Bad actors should be removed from the market, period. And both FDA and FTC already have ample regulatory tools at their disposal to make this happen.

But ACP’s central proposal, a drug-style premarket approval system, would decimate consumer access to safe, natural products that millions of Americans rely on.