| Dear Reader, The year that former Utah GOP Senator Orrin Hatch changed the future for dietary supplements was 1994, the same year I landed in Salt Lake City to be a reporter at KUER. Utah, I quickly learned, was a beehive for the natural products industry, and Hatch wanted to ensure their future. His bill, the Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act, allowed manufacturers to make general health claims about their products without having to prove to the federal Food and Drug Administration that the product was safe or effective. This meant products that used essential oils, amino acids, herbs, probiotics and other natural ingredients could be sold with guidance for their use that was written by nutritionists, herbalists, or manufacturers, and there didn't have to be any formal "trials" or scientific tests of the product. To pretty much everyone I talked to in Utah at the time, that seemed sensible. Why should herbs, used for centuries, have to get approval from the FDA? The FDA is for drugs, and these weren't drugs. Not to mention that the FDA allows all manner of chemicals on the market without requiring proof they're safe; why, then, put natural products through those hoops? Anyone urging caution was a small voice in a state on the edge of a new gold boom. Hatch's bill passed and the natural products industry in Utah took off, growing to more than a $10 billion-a-year industry today – one-fifth of the U.S. market. Fast-forward to 2019. Today, the sheer number and range of dietary supplements, essential oils, hormones, and metabolic compounds is dizzying, and the amount of information available about exactly what's in them and how they interact with the body or with each other is infinitesimal. This week, we explore one of the newest hot products – an herb people credit with saving them from opiate addiction, and which a kid can buy out of a vending machine. Kratom could, on its own, make a case for some kind of guarantee that supplements are what they claim to be – it's implicated in deaths and in saving lives. Perhaps it can do both. And if it's that powerful, should someone be testing and deciding what dosage and level of purity people can buy? Also: next week we won't be sending out a newsletter as KQED will be closed for the holiday. I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving. |
