The Food and Drug Administration prohibits with an absolute prior restraint every claim in the market that a nutrient treats a disease.  It is, for example, illegal for you to be told in the market that prune juice treats constipation; that glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate treat osteoarthritis; that omega-3 fatty acids reduce the risk of sudden death heart attack; or that folic acid reduces the risk of alzheimer's disease.  Each of those claims is demonstrably true, yet prohibited by the FDA.  Why does the FDA ban speech that can heal and save lives?  FDA prohibits the information to protect drugs from competition.  It reserves to the pharmaceutical industry the right to make claims about therapeutic effects, ensuring that drug companies have a monopoly on the making of such claims and the economic rewards that come from them.  The rights violation carries with it loss of health and sometimes life.  It also causes consumers who might well find an ailment treatable with inexpensive and non-toxic dietary elements to perceive costly and side effect laden drugs as their only alternative.  For example, FDA's ban on the claim that folic acid reduces the risk of neural tube defects contributed to 2,500 preventable neural tube defect births in America each year the ban remained in place; FDA's ban on the glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate claim contributes to twenty million Americans pain and suffering associated with osteoarthritis; and FDA's ban on the omega-3/sudden death heart attack claim contributes to approximately 100,000 preventable sudden death heart attacks each year.  It is a lie that foods and elements in foods lack therapeutic effects.  Many dietary ingredients have such effects.  Telling the truth about those effects in the market can land you in jail.  FDA's ongoing censorship of truthful nutrient-disease information to protect drugs from competition violates the First Amendment.

The Federal Trade Commission prosecutes parties who make advertising claims about the effects of foods and nutrients on the body.  It does not limit those prosecutions to parties that actually deceive consumers.  It also does not limit those prosecutions to products that fail to perform as advertised.  FTC has refused to define an objective standard of review that would constrain its power to those cases in which ads actually deceive.  Instead, it exercises broad, unbridled discretion in charging and condemning parties as deceptive advertisers.  Having no objectively definable standard of review and having also shifted the burden of proof concerning deception from the government to the regulated class, FTC makes it impossible for regulatees to know what level, degree, quality and quantity of science it will find acceptable as support for a claim and deems ineffectual products that, in fact, are efficacious.  To be sure, some held to be deceptive advertisers are deserving of that badge of dishonor but others so held do not.  No one in this country should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.  Moreover, no one in this country should be held by the government to be a deceptive advertiser unless the government proves that consumers have in fact been deceived.  The FTC requires no such proof from itself.  The FTC also holds to the position that claims not even made by advertisers, ones said to be "implied," may form the basis of a ruling of deceptive advertising. In short, in this standardless environment, FTC can deem at its discretion any ad deceptive and yet never have to prove a single consumer deceived.  This travesty of justice offends core First and Fifth Amendment values.  

H.R. 2117, the Health Freedom Protection Act, will end FDA and FTC censorship.  Public support for the bill is critical.  The Coalition to End FDA and FTC Censorship has established the links below to help you email your member of Congress and urge support for this vital bill.  The welfare of Americans and American free enterprise depends upon it.  If you truly believe in our Constitution and in our free enterprise system, here is your chance to let Congress know you will not sit back while agencies of your federal government take your freedoms away.

Read Congressman Ron Paul's remarks while introducing this Bill