TAKE YOUR VITAMINS, OR ELSE

NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA Get ready for the vitamin police, warns Richard E. Ralston, executive director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM), referring to the Food and Drug Administration's proposed new regulations.

Today the FDA adds billions of dollars to the cost of drugs, Ralston observed in a recent op-ed. Ralston wrote: The FDA delays the availability of new drugs for years. The first principle of medicine is do no harm.

But the cost of keeping drugs off the market, and adding to the cost of existing drugs, is extremely harmful to our health. The FDA now wants to extend these controls to vitamins and other dietary supplements.

AFCM opposes socialized medicine on principle and favors free market ideas, such as Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and tax reform.

According to the FDA, Americans cannot be counted on to take vitamins or dietary supplements without poisoning or killing themselves, Ralston wrote.

Ralston's articles have been published in the Houston Chronicle, Orange County Register and the Washington Times.

Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, (AFCM), (http://www.afcm.org) founded in 1993, publishes a consumer's guide to free market reforms on its Web site and AFCM is the nation's only educational organization based on individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in medicine.