In the wake of yesterday's Senate hearing on "hidden steroids" sold as dietary supplements, mainstream media outlets are focusing on possible efforts to amend the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
The New York Times notes here that Congress is investigating "whether laws, health agency resources and manufacturing guidelines are adequate to protect the public from products that illegally contain steroids but masquerade as dietary supplements." Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Sens. Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter, the only lawmakers present at the hearing, "voiced uncertainty" about the need for changing DSHEA.
McClatchy focuses here on FDA's supposed difficulty in keeping tabs on the dietary supplement market. At the hearing, Michael Levy of the Office of Compliance in the agency's drug center discussed the challenge of identifying and analyzing violative steroid products, but did not request more agency authority over supplements.
Actually, "The Tan Sheet" believes FDA and the Drug Enforcement Administraiton took the most heat from Specter, while the supplement industry was generally spared. The Pennsylvania Democrat, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, once again engaged in the cherished congressional pasttime of bureaucracy bashing.
"I can't just list something on schedule III, it still has to go through the scheduling process," an exasperated Rannazzisi said.
"Would you like us to change the law to simplify the scheduling process?" Specter asked. Rannazzisi did not reply.
As should be expected, Hatch, R-Utah, backed the supplement industry and DSHEA at every turn during the hearing, emphasizing that stricter enforcement of existing laws via increased FDA resources is the way to clear shelves of steroids posing as supplements.
Specter, meanwhile, said, "We need to take a look at what we're going to do here with the exemption which allows these bodybuilding steroids to be sold without pre-clearance" under DSHEA, though he did not mention favoring any specific proposals.
In any case, amendments to DSHEA would have to go through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Specter is not a member. Hatch sits on HELP, which is chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, a fierce DSHEA defender.
(Look for more analysis of the hearing in the Oct. 5 issue of "The Tan Sheet," your source for news affecting the supplement industry. Click here for a free trial subscription.)
- Dan Schiff (d.schiff@elsevier.com)
