ANTI-AGING SUPPLEMENTS SOON TO BE ILLEGAL?!

DHEA, 7-KETO DHEA, PREGNENOLONE UNFORESEEN VICTIMS OF ANTI-ANDRO BILL

By Patrick Arnold

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who enjoy and benefit from anti-aging supplements, be afraid.  Be very afraid.  Certain members of Congress are intent on taking them away from you, and placing you under arrest if you possess them!  Sounds far-fetched?  It’s frighteningly real, extremely serious, and absolutely imminent!  But amazingly, practically nobody in the anti-aging / life-extension community is aware of it, much less is denouncing it in the media.

The villain is the so-called “Anti-Andro Bill” – H.R. 5564 – introduced last October by U.S. Representatives Sweeney and Osborne.  Purporting to address the use of muscle-building “andro” supplements by teens, this alarming and wildly overbroad bill would have devastating effects on mature adults throughout America.  It would actually permit the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to schedule a wide variety of currently over-the-counter nutritional supplements as controlled substances.  In effect, this bill would authorize the arrest and criminal prosecution of millions of Americans as drug offenders -- just for possessing supplements like DHEA, 7-keto DHEA, and pregnenolone!  Those caught with these currently legal supplements -- proven to have powerful health benefits and anti-aging properties -- would even be subject to federal asset forfeiture laws, permitting the government to seize and retain private property!  All this would be done by making an end-run around the proper lawful procedures, and without any evidence of legitimate public health concerns or dangers to American adults.  The bill seeks to deal a staggering blow to nutritional supplement freedom and the Dietary Supplements Health and Education Act (DSHEA)! 

Sounds too outrageous to be true?  Think again!

The Anatomy of H.R. 5564

The intention of the bill is supposedly to keep testosterone precursors like androstenedione away from teens.  But rather than restricting sales of these items to minors, H.R. 5564 would restrict all steroid hormone precursors from people of all ages.  And not by making them prescription medicines, but by reclassifying them as controlled substances (see sidebar for the specific definition of what a “controlled substance” is).  The bill would accomplish this by “bootstrapping” these compounds into the federal Anabolic Steroid Control Act.  This act was a 1990 revision to the original Controlled Substances Act of 1970, and it reclassified anabolic steroids from simple prescription medicines to highly restricted Schedule III controlled substances.  Mere possession of a schedule III controlled substance without a valid prescription is a federal drug offense with serious potential penalties that can even include jail time.

Let’s look at the actual language of the bill.  It’s crucial that life extensionists and anti-aging enthusiasts understand what this language really means, because it was written that way for a reason.  That reason, chillingly, is to allow the government to extend its grasp far beyond testosterone precursors and teens, giving them the power to control non-andro steroid hormone precursors (DHEA, 7-keto DHEA, pregnenolone, etc.) and the mature adults who take them.  The following is the heart of the bill:

SECTION 1. SCHEDULING OF CERTAIN SUBSTANCES.

(a) DEFINITION- Section 102(23) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802(23)) is amended--

(1) by striking `(A)' and inserting `(B)(i)';

(2) by striking `(B)' and inserting `(ii);

(3) by striking `(C)' and inserting `(iii); and

(4) by inserting after `means a substance--' the following new subparagraph:

`(A) which the Attorney General has found to be, and by regulation designated as being, the immediate chemical precursor of an anabolic steroid that has been scheduled as a controlled substance (hereinafter in this subparagraph referred to as `scheduled anabolic steroid') which either is a metabolite of a scheduled anabolic steroid or is transformed in the body directly into a scheduled anabolic steroid or the metabolite of a scheduled anabolic steroid; or'.

(b) PLACEMENT ON SCHEDULE- Section 201(e) of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 811(e)) is amended--

(1) by inserting `or for the immediate precursor of a scheduled anabolic steroid, without regard to the requirements of section 102(41), including the requirement that the substance promote muscle growth' after `section 202(b)'; and

(2) by adding at the end the following: `However, once an immediate precursor described in section 102(23)(A) is placed in a schedule pursuant to this section, it becomes a controlled substance and the Attorney General may schedule an immediate precursor of that substance in accordance with this section.

While all this legalese may seem overly technical, it’s very important to understand the scope of what’s written here.  The key language starts in paragraph 1(a)(4).  This is where the primary qualifications for a controlled steroid precursor are outlined in a new subparagraph “(A)”.  Interpreted simply, this new subparagraph says that an immediate precursor to a controlled anabolic steroid shall itself become a controlled anabolic steroid.  Case in point:  immediately upon passage of this bill, androstenedione, which is the precursor to the controlled anabolic steroid testosterone, will automatically become a controlled steroid.

All right, that part is pretty obvious.  It’s in subsection 1(b) where the sneakiness begins.  First off, look at the troubling language of paragraph 1(b)(1): “…without regard to … the requirement that the substance promote muscle growth” (emphasis added).  This language changes the bill from one designed to simply eliminate the supposedly muscle-promoting andro products, to a bill that eliminates ALL steroid precursors – such as anti-aging precursors like 7-keto and pregnenolone that have absolutely nothing to do with muscle mass.

Precursors of Precursors of Precursors…

Okay, so the real intention is revealed in 1(b)(1).  It’s in 1(b)(2) that the mechanics of how the anti-aging steroid precursors will be swept up.  This paragraph states, in effect, that not only precursors of anabolic steroids will be controlled, but precursors of precursors of anabolic steroids, and then precursors of precursors of precursors, etc.  Get the picture?  This is the silver bullet, folks, because look at how it works:

This is one of the main metabolic pathways of pregnenolone to testosterone.  H.R. 5564 is written so that androstenedione, because of its conversion to testosterone, becomes classified as a controlled substance.  Now, according to paragraph 1(b)(2), the Attorney General can then declare DHEA a controlled substance because it is the immediate precursor of androstenedione, now a controlled substance.  As soon as that is completed, the process can repeat itself with 17alpha-hydroxypregenolone and finally end with pregnenolone being classified.  There they go, like dominoes, all criminalized by simple administrative act.  At that point, there’s not much any person, agency, or citizen’s action group can do about it.  It’s already the law of the land, and you’re a criminal if you violate it.

Don’t Forget the Metabolites!

What about 7-keto DHEA?  Does it escape the tentacles of this far-reaching bill?  No hope there, I’m afraid.  They were careful not to leave that one out.  Take a look at this:

7-keto DHEA is not a precursor of DHEA; however it is a metabolite.  Now if you look back to the new subparagraph (A) proposed in 1(a)(4), you will see that they modified the language to include metabolites as well.  They obviously wrote this bill with the intention to make it as broad in scope as possible – to go beyond just the andro-type immediate precursors and to swipe up every steroid hormone precursor product being sold today as a nutritional supplement!!!

Wake Up, America!

If you are a life extensionist or anti-aging supplement user, then we are going to spell it out for you.  Don’t be deceived by the stated goals of this bill.  This dangerous bill tries to sneak dietary products that are dear to you into a bill that is being promoted to Congress and to the media as seeking to ban over-the-counter anabolic steroids.  With images of kids taking andro to hit home runs like Mark McGwire in the mind of Congress, coupled with the support of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), the NFL, and the NCAA, the political pressure to vote for this bill is almost overwhelming.  Unfortunately, what the proponents of this bill are NOT telling anyone is that this bill is about a lot more than andro.  It’s also about sneaking in as many other supplements as possible – supplements that do NOT have the stigma of andro, and that otherwise would be much more difficult to eliminate from shelves.

You Must Act Immediately!!

H.R. 5564 is a high priority bill that has received tremendous media coverage the past several weeks in a wide variety of outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post.  Rep. Sweeney has made clear that he is going to push as hard as possible to get it passed quickly.

Unfortunately, right now there is practically no resistance to this bill.  With its politically popular “save our teens” message and well-hidden assaults on adult freedoms, H.R. 5564 is basically a home run – that is, unless we act and act quickly!!  Scream out to the politicians on Capitol Hill that mature American adults want supplement freedom, not an expansion of the war on drugs into our very own neighborhood health food stores!  Please contact the United Supplement Freedom Association, Inc. (USFA), a not-for-profit coalition dedicated to the preservation of nutritional freedoms for American adults.  You can visit online right now at www.USFA.biz, where you can click on the Anti-Aging section and follow the instructions on how to petition your congressional representatives to demand that they fight this bill!!  A form letter and list of representatives is available.  Alternatively, you can write and contribute to the USFA through the association’s general counsel, Rick Collins, Esq., United Supplement Freedom Association, Inc., One Old Country Road, Suite 250, Carle Place, New York, 11514.   

WE must act immediately to let our voice be heard, or face the beginning of the end of our supplement freedoms!!!