DSHEA implementation at state level is industry's next challenge, state rep says.

DSHEA ENFORCEMENT: DIETARY SUPPLEMENT INDUSTRY WARNED NOT TO IGNORE STATES' interests by John Hurson, Democratic majority leader in the Maryland State Legislature, during a Sept. 20 session of the Council for Responsible Nutrition's 1995 annual meeting. Hurson cautioned that while "industry gained...a whole working system in the federal government" with the passage of DSHEA, "there have been changes in Washington since the bill passed and a new philosophy about what the roles of the federal and state governments should be." Hurson is also VP-intergovernmental affairs at Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Baily & Robinson.

Hurson suggested that it may be possible "to successfully argue that the kind of regulatory activity we need in the dietary supplement area should stay at a federal level." States are "going to get more power but less money," and may not "have the ability to implement effective regulations financially," he pointed out.

However, "if the effort at the federal level does in fact push things down to the states," Hurson said, "I think the reaction at the state level is going to be more regulation rather than less."

The states may react to the "chaos" of being expected to "assume the federal role" by implementing emergency regulations that "don't necessarily have to be" drafted off of the federal regulatory scheme, he cautioned.

Hurson also advised industry to "beware of...the domino effect" in state enforcement activity. "It's very possible that if one state, either on an enforcement action level or in terms of legislative action, passes some kind of anti-dietary supplement legislation, other states will pick up on it very quickly," he said. He pointed out that things happen more "rapidly" in state legislature "than in Washington" and "can happen very quickly state to state."

"There is really a necessity for a national education or strategy program put together by this organization to prevent [anti-supplement] activities from starting in even one state," Hurson told the CRN audience. "Probably the most important thing you can do is get active at the state level," he stressed.

In comments during the same session, Tony Young, of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm Piper & Marbury, agreed that the challenge facing industry now is to "convince the states that [DSHEA] was an appropriate law and that [the dietary supplement] industry can live under this law compatibly with the state regulatory authorities."

He suggested, however, that industry may have a struggle ahead. "It's enormously expensive to have to fight these battles [in] state after state after state," he said. To "go into a [state legislature] environment that is totally foreign" is "not a fun way to earn frequent-flier miles," Young quipped. "We are outsiders and treated that way," he said.

Young maintained that the three most important "new concepts" that should be lifted from DSHEA and placed into state law are: the broad definition of "dietary supplement"; tolerance for statements of nutritional support; and the use of third-party literature in conjunction with the sale of dietary supplements.