You Choose 2012: Liberty or Regulation

In June 2010 while the American people were focused on the Gulf oil spill, Obama issued Executive Order (EO) 13544. This EO indirectly links America’s health policy to the UN’s “voluntary” standard “Codex Alimentarius” (CA) – the UN’s worldwide plan for food standards – through the World Trade Organization. WTO has adopted CA as an international reference standard for the resolution of disputes concerning food safety and consumer protection. As a participant in WTO, the United States must comply with “findings” by WTO on international trade policy disputes.

Specifically, Executive Order 13544, Section 6, paragraphs (f) and (g) state that the National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council – yet another bureaucratic committee -- shall submit a report to the President annually that “contains specific plans to ensure that all Federal health-care programs are fully coordinated with science-based prevention recommendations by the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and contains specific plans to ensure that all prevention programs outside the Department of Health and Human Services are based on the science-based guidelines developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”[Emphasis mine]

In other words, by embracing the standard that all programs outside of DHS are “science-based,” Americans must subordinate their freedom to choose what is right for them to the fiats of an international body. How so? All WTO has to do is claim that alternative medicines, vitamins, and health supplements are “non-scientific” or impose mandatory labeling / testing requirements that make them uneconomic, and they will be effectively banned, as a condition of trade.

Evidence exists to support that this scenario. In 1996, the German delegation to the Codex Alimentarius Commission put forward a proposal that no herb, vitamin or mineral should be sold for preventive or therapeutic reasons, and that supplements should be reclassified as drugs. The proposal was agreed, but protests halted its implementation. At the 28th Session of the Commission, held in July 2005, the "Guidelines for Vitamin and Mineral Food Supplements" were adopted during the meeting as new global safety guidelines. Many member countries can choose to regulate dietary supplements as therapeutic goods or pharmaceuticals or by some other category. Supplements are not explicitly banned, but the language subjects them to labeling and packaging requirements, sets criteria for the setting of maximum and minimum dosage levels, and requires that safety and efficacy are considered when determining ingredient sources.

Actions like the one described above will result in alternative / homeopathic medicine, including supplements, being regulated out of existence. This is a direct assault on individual liberty: if enacted it will ultimately limit an individual’s medicinal choices to only those regulated by the federal government and "big "pharma. A point may come in every American citizen's life when pharmaceutical drugs may not be affordable, and he or she must rely more heavily on lower cost, homeopathic remedies. That is an individual’s choice, not the government's.

The President’s action violates every American’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is inconsistent with American values and adds more complexity to an already overly complex regulatory schema.