Each year, more than 150 million Americans depend on dietary supplements to help maintain their overall health and wellness. Likewise, dietary supplement companies rely on government agencies to enforce the law and ensure that the dietary supplements consumers take are safe. Through regulations that include new dietary ingredient notifications and post marketing adverse event surveillance, FDA can reject and remove products from the market that don’t have appropriate safety profiles or products that are adulterated. By and large, dietary supplements are safe; however, there is one on-going concern facing our industry’s customers and damaging legitimate industry’s reputation—the illegal marketing of anabolic steroids as dietary supplements. It’s time for industry to work with Congress to fix this concern.

In 2004, CRN and the dietary supplement trade associations joined forces with other organizations to support Congress in passing the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004. This law gave the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) additional authority to list anabolic steroids and their analogues to a controlled substance list, thereby making it easier to quickly remove illegal steroids, including those marketed as dietary supplements, from the marketplace.

Now, 10 years later, we are asking Congress to add more protections for consumers by passing the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act (DASCA) of 2014, which enhances the original law by adding new tools for DEA to identify and quickly respond when new designer anabolic steroids are introduced and falsely marketed as dietary supplements.

A Key Priority
CRN is tired of seeing the industry’s reputation hijacked by companies flouting the law. So our association has endeavored to ensure that not only our member companies, but also others in the industry understand the bill, understand how this new legislation would give DEA appropriate additional authority, and educate stakeholders about why passing DASCA is vital. Not only is it good policy, it’s the right thing to do for consumers, and it’s very much needed for the credibility of the responsible dietary supplement industry. This year, promoting DASCA is one of CRN’s key legislative priorities, starting with the support of our member companies, coordinating efforts with the other industry trade associations, taking the lead on Capitol Hill, and reassuring grassroots organizations that this bill will not remove legitimate supplements from the marketplace.  

It may seem overly technical, but it has been critical to engage other parties and generate interest on the Hill. But when legislators understand that it’s a bill to protect consumers from illegal activities, it makes the process move more quickly. In fact, one thing that makes this bill unique is that there is no real opposition. The only potential stumbling block is making sure this bill doesn’t get lost in the halls of Congress, swept aside by all the other bills at its doorstep. The only thing standing in our way now is time. 

We are now at the point where two parts are moving at the same time. There is a bill in the Senate, and then there is a bill in the House of Representatives. This legislation has many supporters, including the Dietary Supplement Caucus whose members are co-sponsoring the legislation, talking to their colleagues about DASCA’s importance, and encouraging their respective colleagues to co-sponsor the legislation.

A Call to Action
With a limited number of working days left in Congress, we need your help to pass this bill. Connect with your trade association to ask them to make DASCA a priority. Contact your congressional representatives, urging them to give this bill full consideration. Remember, we don’t want the small number of bad actors who are engaging in dangerous manufacturing and marketing practices by slipping illegal anabolic steroids into products and calling them dietary supplements to win. We want Congress to know our industry is responsible, and our industry cares. Let’s do everything we can to make dietary supplements safe: passing DASCA is a must-do. 

We’re hopeful that DASCA will pass this year. That’s our goal. But we intend to see this bill through to the end. And once it passes, we will all be able to say that we did this as an industry.