New Mexico Aspartame Bills Charge FDA Inaction
Can federal approval of a food ingredient prevent States from acting on a health issue they feel needs to be resolved? The question will be tested in the New Mexico State legislature.
Activists and New Mexico legislators are calling for new rules that will take aspartame, a dangerous artificial sweetener, off the market. They criticize the FDA for its continued inaction, even in the face of numerous and serious adverse reactions reported by consumers.
Aspartame was approved in 1981 over the objections of the FDA's own scientists, when Donald Rumsfeld, former CEO of aspartame maker Searle, called in his "political markers". Since that time, the FDA has been stonewalling adverse reaction reports on the sweetener.
Both original studies on rodents and a recent long-term Italian study make serious adverse reactions to the sweetener a high probability. There have been several calls to ban the sweetener, the latest one in the UK, where Roger Williams, a UK member of Parliament, cited "compelling and reliable evidence for this carcinogenic substance to be banned from the UK food and drinks market altogether".
New Mexico legislators Irvin Harrison and Gerals Ortiz y Pino have introduced identical bills in both houses of the state legislature that would require action against the sweetener in New Mexico, even though the FDA refuses to change its own stand.
Stephen Fox reports:
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New era of consumer protection possible, if legislature acts on aspartame ban
Stephen Fox
January 20, 2006
(first published in the Free New Mexican)Bills to ban Neurotoxic Sweetener Aspartame in New Mexico Legislature will result in a New Era of Consumer Protection in the USA, but their survival and further progress in short session depends entirely on Gov. Richardson and Senate President Pro Tempore Ben Altamirano.
Aspartame's days may be numbered, given the implications of this national precedent for a state legislature to consider prohibiting specifically this FDA approved product. Aspartame, sometimes called NutraSweet, is a proven neurotoxin and carcinogen found in 6000 food products and in over 500 pharmaceutical preparations, despite clear proof of its toxicity. For example, the Ramazzini Foundation Report is posted on the website of the USA National Institute of Health. As a result there are just the beginnings of Congressional inquiries to the FDA Commissioner as to why the FDA has not rescinded its approval for aspartame.
New Mexico need not wait for the cumbersome corrupt and underinformed FDA bureaucracy to even start to get into gear.
Albuquerque Democrat, Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino, and Gallup Navajo Democrat, Representative Irvin Harrison, have introduced legislation that clearly moves New Mexico forward in terms of protecting citizens' health from this neurodegenerative sweetener, resulting from the complete breakdown in sound approval functions at the US FDA going back to 1981 and 1983, no more clearly exemplified than in the case artificial sweetener, Aspartame.
Harrison introduced House Bill 202, and the Senate version, Senate Bill 250, was introduced by the Honorable Gerald Ortiz y Pino.
Regulatory mechanisms at the state level have largely failed, been postponed and even ignored, due to corporate pressure and manipulation, largely by Ajinomoto of Japan, the world’s largest Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate manufacturer. The eventual and inevitable New Mexico ban through legislative means is a vital international precedent, one that could precipitate a new era of Consumer Protection in the United States and in other nations.
The bills' author and sponsors believe that these bills are within the conceptual matrix not only of Governor Richardson’s Year of the Child and Healthy Kids legislative initiatives, but also that they are consistent within the Governor's views that because the FDA "isn't doing anything," every state needs to take back and to exercise some of the power ceded earlier to the Federal level, going back to the creation of the Food and Drug Administration in the Roosevelt era.
New Mexico statutes on protecting Health, particularly statutes regarding poisonous and deleterious food additives in the New Mexico Food Act are completely consistent with the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as numerous US Supreme Court and U.S. Court of Appeals decisions in related matters. Many recent U.S. Court of Appeals decisions confirm that in health matters, federal and state jurisdictions need not be competitive or exclusionary, given that the goal of both is to protect health.
Soft drink companies would be smarter not to fight efforts to achieve freedom from neurotoxic multi-potentially carcinogenic sweetener additives. Why not immediately switch to a non-toxic harmless natural sweetener like Stevia? Indeed, conversations between Coca Cola’s lobbyist and Vice President of New Mexico operations and the bill's author occurred January 17, in which the bill's author recommended precisely such a course of action to the CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of Coca Cola, presumably by now relayed by the lobbyist to them.
We could (but won't) write the predictable Coca Cola advertisement:
“America, we have been listening to your concerns for health, and for those reasons, we are switching the sweetener in our 'diet' products to Stevia, which will take ten years to build new factories, starting in 2009."By doing so, Coca Cola (or whichever manufacturer implements this bright idea first) would make billions of dollars and win millions of new patrons.
The inevitability of soft drink companies to get rid of aspartame, acesulfame K, and sucralose by the world's largest soft drink manufacturers, of course, does nothing to remove, obviate or conceal some other forgotten neurotoxicities in that product, like that of Coke’s major ingredient, phosphoric acid, which is also used to prime unfinished steel before it is painted. New Mexicans might wonder "What does phosphoric acid do to one's chromosomes, if it can do that to raw steel?"
Hoping to hide behind their product's FDA approval, industry lobbyists and corporate lawyers will bitterly complain to legislative committees that any state action to ban an incontrovertibly proven neurotoxic multi-potential carcinogen like aspartame is automatically preempted by the Supremacy Clause and the Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution.
They would like the Legislature to accept the corporate vantage point that such a preemptive protective action by the state of New Mexico is therefore impossible. This argument, accompanied by non-credible threats of litigation, worked in 2005 to postpone the EIB's scheduled 5-day hearings on Aspartame in July 2006 until January 2007. Such considerations are incorporated in the Legislative intent sections of the two bills.
Corporate lobbyists are already working against these bills, even having contacted numerous members of the NM Senate to ask them to not sign the bill as co-sponsors! We expect these same corporate minions to bring fat stacks of legal arguments to committee members similar to those already submitted to Mr. Trigg, Chief of Administrative Division in the Attorney General’s office, by one of several lawyers working for the world’s largest Aspartame and Monosodium Glutamate manufacturer, Ajinomoto of Japan, with the hope of overwhelming and intimidating committee members, as they have so far successfully done in many other states. Perhaps Mr. Trigg would be happy to forward to you this document, if you call him and leave a polite message.
Those corporate legal theories cannot be superimposed on New Mexico's urgent need to protect the health of its citizens, and they will be soundly refuted by more compelling stacks of medical commentaries by leading physicians, and of legal arguments by, for example, Jim Turner of the Washington D.C. law firm of Swankin and Turner, the consumer lawyer whose efforts precipitated President Nixon's 1969 order to the Commissioner of the FDA to rescind the approval for CYCLAMATES, yet another neurotoxic carcinogenic artificial sweetener. [Did you ever think for a moment that you would miss Nixon?] Turner with Ralph Nader is co-author of The Chemical Feast (1970), and the Santa Fe Library has one copy.
For Molecular Biologist Professor at University of Chicago's comments on aspartame: www.wnho.net/molecular_biologists_aspartame_commentary.htm
Lobbyists will fight this legislation right up to the ink drying as (we hope) they are signed by Governor Richardson. For much more detailed information on corporate efforts to ruin pro child health and nutrition legislation that cites specific examples of what lobbyists have done and where and when, revealing their vicious tactics in toto, please read the extraordinary compilations thereof by Hastings College of Health Policy Law Professor Michele Simon, for example:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/coke.cfm
Some of Coca Cola’s actions have resulted in their products being banned by Universities in New York and in Michigan:
www.killercoke.org/crimes.htm (link no longer active)
For the very best analysis on how aspartame violates both federal and state statutes on adulteration, by Dr. Betty Martini, Honorary Doctor of Humanities, please go to:
http://www.rense.com/general67/aspar.htmFor more information on the Ramazzini Foundation for Oncology study proving carcinogenicity, go to the website for the United States National Institute of Health, where it has been posted since mid-November 2005, with seemingly little comprehension of this in any branch of government. If you don't do Internet, call the office of Senator Bingaman and Congressman Udall.
Other key documents are located at the extensive website for the World
Natural Health Organization, http://www.wnho.net, click on aspartame. Particularly noteworthy are the medical texts and commentaries by H.J.Roberts, M.D., author of Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, as well as his later article, Aspartame Disease: An FDA Approved Epidemic.
If you have ingested aspartame in "diet" beverages, "sugarless" gum, blue packet of Equal, "low-fat" yogurt, and at least 6000 other food products, or in hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations, vitamins, aspirin, and if you want to begin the long process of detoxifying, at the http://www.wnho.net site, read Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock's article "What to do if you have used Aspartame," found at http://www.wnho.net, click on aspartame. Blaylock is also author of Excitotoxins: the Taste that Kills.
To learn more of Governor Richardson's thinking on these consumer matters, please contact his Director of Consumer Protection Affairs.
To learn about possible Congressional action regarding the FDA rescinding its approval of Aspartame, not only in food, but also in hundreds of pharmaceutical preparations for children and for adults, and particularly inquiries into the fact that Gulf War Syndrome could be a euphemism for neurodegenerative effects from diketopiperazine, one of the chemicals released when diet beverages are left in the sun in Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, and drunk in large quantities by U.S. soldiers, please contact:
U.S. Congressman Tom Udall, (202) 225-6190
U.S. Congressman Lane Evans, Chairman of House Veterans Committee (202) 225-5905 lane.evans@mail.house.gov
U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman
Toll-free (in NM): 1-800-443-8658 DC: (202) 224-5521
senator_bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov
Media Inquiries:Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino District 12
County: Bernalillo
Capitol Phone:
986-4380
___________________________________________
Representative Irvin Harrison District 5
Counties: McKinley & San Juan
Capitol Office Phone:
986-4464
__________________________________________
Stephen Fox
Stephen Fox is a Santa Fe gallery owner with keen interests in landscapes, Native American art, and nutrition related legislation. He and Tom Udall's mother, Lee, now deceased, and Tom's daughter, Amanda Cooper, laid out the concept of a New Mexico Nutrition Council one wintry evening in 1997 while stuffing envelopes early in Tom's first Congressional campaign. He believes that all of these initiatives are entirely consistent with Governor Richardson's Year of the Child and Healthy Kids efforts. Until the Nutrition Council legislation is passed and signed by Richardson, Fox describes it as an Acting Nutrition Council.
See also:Organic Consumers Org: Help New Mexico Ban Aspartame
Access from www.organicconsumers.org see link under "Take Action".New Mexico Begins Legislative Process To Ban Aspartame
Fifteen state senators sponsored a bill to rid New Mexico of what some have called "Rumsfeld's Disease."
20 Jan 2006 - By Greg SzymanskiAdverse Reactions to Aspartame
Aspartame May Be the Cause of Your Health Problems- - -
January 2008: The sponsor of this bill and ProTem President of the NM Senate has recently passed away. Here is a Stephen Fox article:Reminiscence on the passing of Senate President Ben Altamirano
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday January 22 2006
updated on Monday December 13 2010URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/01/22/new_mexico_aspartame_bills_charge_fda_inaction.htm
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