State legislators continue to introduce bills seeking to restrict minors’ access to dietary supplements marketed for potential weight loss and muscle health benefits.

The bills, often solely targeting brick-and-mortar retail transactions, have included a range of provisions, such as placing products in a locked box or behind the register, or requiring buyers to show a form of ID.

Just recently, New Jersey’s Assembly Health Committee advanced a bill to restrict access to “muscle-building” supplements in brick-and-mortar retail locations. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill designed to limit access to supplements in the weight management category, but expressed intent to rework and reintroduce the legislation in 2023.

At the American Herbal Product Association (AHPA)’s virtual Regulatory Congress, experts discussed how the industry can engage in the discussion with the goal of protecting safe and efficacious products from restriction.

Long-Term Opposition

STRIPED (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders) is one of the most prevalent advocates of restricting access to dietary supplements.

The organization, according to its Advocacy Playbook, argues that there is a correlation between dietary supplements and “diet pill” usage and eating disorders in children and adolescents. The organization argues state action is warranted based on safety concerns, and considers the use of supplements “unhealthy weight control behavior.”

“They’ve been very opportunistic and effective,” said Robert Marriott, director of regulatory affairs at AHPA. “STRIPED does target other industries and products, but we’re viewed as a particularly soft and easy target,” and the group “often tries to conflate lawful dietary supplements and illegal, adulterated products containing drugs.”

Marriott noted that, the class of products that STRIPED’s model legislation targets “could mean virtually anything in practice. It’s completely unclear which products are covered.”

“This is a much broader category of products than what we would typically think of as weight loss supplements,” Marriott continued. “All of these products would have to be stored behind a counter, where retailers typically store tobacco products.”

“These bills will have the biggest impact on major retailers, who are the least likely to sell non-compliant and unsafe products on their shelves,” said Sachin Kanabar, chief legal officer at Iovate Health Sciences. “These pieces of legislation likely won’t achieve any of the purported benefits, and will mainly result in higher costs to consumers, legitimate retailers, and the rest of the industry due to a lack of access and increased prices. This goes without mentioning that many consumers benefit from weight loss products, and might not purchase them if they have to ask a manager to get products out of a lock box just to read a label.”

Calls for Empirical Data

Opponents of the legislative efforts argue that the clinical evidence STRIPED points to has significant limitations that make it difficult to parse out which products are most frequently at issue.

According to Susan Hewlings, director of scientific affairs at Nutrasource/GRAS Associates, studies referenced by STRIPED are primarily based on retrospective interviews with patients who’ve suffered eating disorders.

“Researchers asked patients if they took any ‘diet pills’ over a certain time period like six months or a year, with no specification on what those products actually were,” Hewlings said. “The studies also don’t specify which eating disorders the participants were diagnosed with.”

“We know that dieting, as in the overall diet, is the number one risk factor for eating disorders across the board. Blocking access to dietary supplements won’t stop the changes to diet, and people with eating disorders will end up accessing other products that they connect to dieting, such as laxatives, which are the most commonly-used,” Hewlings continued. “People should be concerned that such a large portion of very limited funding for this cause is targeting supplements, rather than more pressing issues such as diet culture, or the misrepresentation of body image on social media […] it’s disheartening to see these resources being drawn in the wrong direction while eating disorder rates continue to rise. We should participate in the education that STRIPED claims it wants to support.”

STRIPED has not been receptive to feedback from the dietary supplements industry, but “we  have opportunities to be part of the cause and build alliances with the ED community to more appropriately draw attention to the root causes of these issues and lead an evidence-based conversation to show that STRIPED is missing the point and shouldn’t be controlling the entire dialogue,” Marriott concurred.

Meet Your Representatives

It’s just as important for industry to engage proactively with representatives at the state level as on the federal level, according to Garry Pay, senior vice president of legal and regulatory affairs at Beachbody LLC.

“Building business will always be a top priority, but get to know state legislators now before there’s an issue and give them a picture of what the industry does to ensure products support health and wellness. Show them your commitment to quality so that legislation doesn’t paint you with the same brush as disreputable companies,” Pay said. “Retailer associations tend to have the strongest voice at this level, and when they speak it matters—legislators don’t want to burden them unless it’s really warranted, so use those bridges and coalitions to make certain bills more sound and oppose others.”

“The key focus should be one-on-one conversations with legislators to demonstrate in a straightforward way how these bills will not turn out the way STRIPED says they will,” said Marriott.