In a move that could help the government trim its burgeoning health care costs, the Food and Drug Administration may soon permit Americans to obtain some drugs used to treat conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes without obtaining a prescription.

The FDA says over-the-counter distribution would let patients get drugs for many common conditions without the time and expense of visiting a doctor, but medical providers call the change medically unsound and note that it also may mean that insurance no longer will pay for the drugs.

“The problem is medicine is just not that simple,” said Dr. Matthew Mintz, an internist at George Washington University Hospital. “You can’t just follow rules and weigh all the pros and cons. It needs to be individualized.”

Under the changes that the agency is considering, patients could diagnose their ailments by answering questions online or at a pharmacy kiosk in order to buy current prescription-only drugs for conditions such as high cholesterol, certain infections, migraine headaches, asthma or allergies.

CONTINUED at the Washington Times.

The criminal tendencies of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration were on full display today when it was revealed the agency installed spy software andillegally hacked into the private Gmail accountsof at least half a dozen of its own top scientists. Those scientists, it turns out, were the very same whistleblowers who warned Congress about the FDA’s approval of dangerous medical devices that threatened the lives of patients. In response to them taking action to protect the lives of the innocent — something the FDA is supposed to do but has long since abandoned — they were instead subjected toillegal hackingand having their employment contracts with the FDA terminated.

Those six scientists and doctors have now filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court which claims that they were subjected toFDA internal harassmentand unjustified job termination. The lawsuit also describes how the FDA hacked into the private email accounts of these scientists, thenintercepted their “whistleblower complaints”intended to be seen only by members of Congress.

“The complaint details how the FDA targeted its employees with acovert spying campaignthat lasted for two years,” reports Whistleblowers.org (http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…). “The [FDA] installed (or activated)spywareon their workplace computers and used other technology that to monitor their password-protected Gmail-to-Gmail communications. Managers used the collected information to learn the identities of confidential whistleblowers and to obtain the details of the public health and safety concerns the whistleblowers intended to disclose to the Office of Special Counsel, Congress and the Agency’s own Inspector General.”

More importantly, documents reveal that the FDA’s own lawyers engaged in acriminal cover-up of evidencein order to obstruct justice and retaliate against the FDA scientists:

“The managers who spearheaded the surveillance efforts were the same managers involved with the wrongdoing and corruption that the whistleblowers were seeking to report. Lawyers at the FDA and HHS Offices of General Counsel, who should have understood that the program breached the employees’ confidentiality, helped FDA managers with theirobstruction and retaliation.”

Take action to support the whistleblowers

The National Whistleblowers Center has issued anaction alertseeking public support for the FDA whistleblowers. You can use the tools on the page linked below to contact your members of Congress and other recipients in Washington:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…

View the FDA spy program documents

Some of the documents in question have been published by the Washington Post, which you can view byclicking here.

WhistleBlowers.org has also published many of the documents intercepted by the FDA as it hacked into the private email accounts of its own scientists. These include:

• Communications to Congress
• Gmail-to-Gmail Communications
• Screen Shots

View all these documents at:
www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1332

Whistleblowers.org also released a special news bulletin about the entire story, viewable at:
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&…

How is FDA hacking legal, but hacking Sarah Palin’s email account gets you a felony conviction?

What’s especially interesting about all this is the contrast to the 2008 hacking of Sarah Palin’s private email account. Then, a University of Tennessee student namedDavid Kernellhacked into Palin’s email account and uncovered some embarrassing emails.

He was convicted of a felony crimecalled “obstruction of justice” for merely deleting emails on his computer, even when he didn’t know an investigation was under way (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/30/us-palin-hacking-idUSTRE80T…).

As Reuters recently reported, “While the 6th Circuit on Monday recognized the law was both vague and broad, it concluded the law applied directly to Kernell’s conduct.”

Ah, but guess what? That same law will never be applied to the FDA’s conduct. And why? Because the federal government operatesoutsidethe law, with no respect for it. Laws only apply to the “little people,” not the criminal thugs who operate the FDA, TSA, DHS, DEA and other corrupt, criminal agencies that incessantly seek more power while abandoning anything resembling lawful conduct.

See, hacking into emails is only illegal of YOU do it, not if the federal government does it. The feds are increasingly demonstrating themselves to bea gang of criminal thugswho abide by no law and run roughshod over the rights of the American people.

FDA is a criminal agency run amok

I’ve said it countless times here on NaturalNews: The FDA is acriminal rogue agencythat is operated by criminal-minded government thugs who routinely break laws and violate human rights in order to pursue their agenda of protecting Big Pharma profits.

Their hacking into the private email accounts of employees isa federal crime– a felony, in fact. That it was done by multiple people who plotted such actions makes it aconspiracy to commit a felonywhich is itself another crime. In fact, if the Justice Department actually conducted an honest investigation into the FDA’s actions in this case, there is no doubt they would uncover multiple felony crimes.

And yet, just watch… there will be no real investigation, no indictments and no prosecution of FDA managers, even as they now routinely commit felony crimes and operate with complete disregard for the law.The FDA is a lawless agencywith zero accountability. In fact,the agency writes its own lawsby simply inventing whatever new regulations it wants to enforce, then sending out men with guns to enforce those regulations (just like what happened with the Rawesome Foods raids).

As attorney Jonathan Emord warned in his bookThe Rise of Tyranny(http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Tyranny-Jonathan-W-Emord/dp/0982059507), the FDA is much like the TSA in that it is a bureaucratic agency out of control. Its directors are appointed, not elected, so there is zero public accountability and no recourse for directors who have gone bad. New regulations put in place by the FDA, DEA, TSA, DHS, ATF or USDA needno Congressional approvaland are not subject to any review by anyone. They simply write their own “laws” and shove them down your throat, often at gunpoint.

This is how agencies like the FDA and TSA are formingtheir own fiefdoms of dark power, subject to no law and no public scrutiny. And this is what allows federal agencies to routinely engage incriminal conspiracieswith total immunity from prosecution.

Consider, if you will, just some of the more recent criminal acts of federal agencies like the FDA:

Federal agencies operate as total criminal gangs

• The ATF recently got caught running guns into Mexico, then laundering billions of dollars in drug money. When it got caught, there werezeroprosecutions. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032934_ATF_illegal_firearms.html)

• The FDA has been caught numerous times lying about the known dangers of deadly prescription drugs, covering for the pharmaceutical industry, intimidating scientists and now engaging incriminal hacking crimesthat actually qualifies for “acts of terrorism” under the U.S. Patriot Act. (Yes, the government IS the terrorist group!)

• The TSA routinely engages iffelony sex crimesagainst innocent travelers by reaching down their pants and touching their genitals. This is a crime against your person and a total violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and its Bill of Rights, yet the TSA does it every single day, claiming total immunity from any and all laws. And amazingly, local Sheriffs sit back and allow these felony crimes to take place in their counties every single day while doing absolutely nothing to stop them!

• The USDA openly conspires with Monsanto and other GMO seed companies todestroy American agricultureby contaminating the genetic heritage of food-producing crops and aiding GMO seed companies in acquiring patent protection for their insidious “seed technology.” This goes on even as those very same seeds producecrop failuresthat actually reduce food production and inevitably result in farmer bankruptcies and suicides.

• The FBI openly admits to not just aiding terrorists in carrying out “mastermind” terror plots in the USA, but actually providing the weapons, plans, guns, ammo, gear and explosives to help the would-be “patsy” terrorists carry out their fabricated plots! See:
http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_FBI_entrapment_terror_plots.html
http://www.naturalnews.com/033751_FBI_terrorism.html

• The DEA conspires with the Coca-Cola company to allow the importation ofhundreds of thousands of tons of coca leaveswhich are processed into Coca-Cola flavoring, producing a byproduct ofpurified cocaine. This is all done with the full permission of the DEA — the very same agency that would throw you or I in prison if we were caught with just a single gram of cocaine. (http://www.naturalnews.com/032658_Coca-Cola_cocaine.html).

Are we a nation of law, or not?

The point is that today’s federal government is run by such outrageous criminals thatthey routinely commit felony crimesand yet seem to operate with total immunity from prosecution. This obviously brings up a critical question: Is not the United States of Americaa nation of law?

Do the laws not apply equally to those in government as well as the People? Why is the federal government insisting it is immune from all prosecution for crimes? And more importantly,why should any of us ever trust the federal government when it routinely lies and commits felony crimes?

If the federal government were a private person, it would have been locked up in prison long ago, convicted of a long string of serious felony crimes. To trust this government when it saysanythingis foolish at best, and suicidal at worst. This is a government that actively and on the record engages in masterminding false flag terror attacks, plotting against the safety of its own people, stealing from the pension funds of federal employees (http://www.naturalnews.com/034762_treasury_federal_employees_pension_…), conducting criminal medical experiments using humans as guinea pigs (http://www.naturalnews.com/033483_Guatemalan_prisoners_medical_experi…) and destroying the Bill of Rights with new laws like the NDAA (http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_NDAA_Bill_of_Rights_Obama.html) and SOPA (http://www.naturalnews.com/034695_SOPA_free_speech_health_freedom.htm…).

To trust this government to protect our interests and our rights is the height of foolishness. No, this government has onlyits own interestsat heart, and those interests are fully focused onexpanding its powerat the expensive of liberty. The People be damned…

A warning to those who think they are part of the system

I can only wonder what these six scientists who worked for the FDA have now come to realize. Before all this, they probably grinned and laughed at the world, knowing they were “part of the system” of power that dominated the U.S. economy. They were agents of the FDA, after all, and therefore practically untouchable!

But this is the great deception of the police state: All that runaway power and control that you helped put into place will eventually beused against YOU!When you join the criminal gangs in Washington and become part of the system that strips away the rights of others, you will eventually face a day of reckoning yourself. Payback is a bitch, they say, and those who lead criminal lives as part of the out-of-control federal government sooner or later find their own legs trapped in the very same freedom-crushing machine they once helped operate.

Such is the nature of tyranny: Even those who enforce it eventually become victims of it. No one is immune from the clutches of Big Brother, not even the FDA’s own top scientists as we have now discovered.

At every level in the federal government, those who speak out are threatened, surveilled, terminated or sometimes just flat-out assassinated. What do you really think happened to Vince Foster, anyway? Or JFK, for that matter? The closer you get to the hub of corrupt power, the more you’re worth dead versus alive, becauseyou know too much.

All of you who work for the system will be destroyed by it

So watch out, all of you who currently lick the boots of the corrupt criminal elite — you too shall be destroyed by the very same system you now serve. Because tyranny knows no mercy. There is no quarter granted by the Dark Lord Sauron, nor the Sith, nor the very real element of spiritual evil that lurks in the dark halls of the Pentagon, the FDA headquarters, and every other power-grabbing criminal federal agency.

They are the criminal betrayers of the American people. They betray their countrymen, their oaths of office and their own souls. And they do it out of an almost vampiric blood thirst for more power over their dominions. They are parasites of infinite evil who prey upon the hard-working men and women whose taxes pay their salaries, and if we are to save America’s future, we mustcut off the funding to all these agenciesin the same way one cuts off the blood supply to a cancerous tumor.

Do as Ron Paul says:Eliminate the TSA. Eliminate the DEA. Eliminate DHS, the FDA and yes, even the extremely corrupt Department of Education. Send the evil creatures in Washington back home to the real world where they must learn tocooperate with peoplerather than ruling over them as bureaucratic tyrants. Slash the federal budget by a trillion dollars or more and you cut off the multiple heads of the hydra growing completely out of control. If more heads grow back, just show the creature a picture ofJanet Napolitano, instantly turning it to stone. Aaaargh!

What we are witnessing today, my friends, is a completely out-of-control federal bureaucracy that respects no law and knows no bounds. The TSA seeks to become theNazi SS of America, running checkpoints on every highway, sporting event and street corner. We are watching total corporate-run fascism unfold right before our very eyes, and if we do not take serious steps to reform bad government and restore our liberties right now, we will ride this monster into the depths of hellish corruption from which the USA as we now know it will never emerge.

The path we are on today can only lead to another holocaust. Mass death. Total police state powers. Countless innocent victims. We are becoming the next great holocaust in the making, and the FDA is playing a key role in furthering that dark agenda.

Source : Natural News.

It’s a seemingly absurd idea on the surface: Why would democrats and liberals want to vote for Ron Paul (a Republican) over President Obama? Maybe because they want freedom instead of tyranny, it turns out. Because if you’re a total slave to the police state, it doesn’t really matter whether you’re on the left or the right, does it?

Here, I give you ten solid reasons why even liberals and progressives are supporting Ron Paul. And by the way, I don’t worship Ron Paul or any individual. What I honor isthe principlesthat Ron Paul stands for — the very same principles President Obama has outright abandoned in his broken promises and disturbing reversals against the American people. Out of all the candidates, only Ron Paul has the ethical and moral strength to carry out his office from a place of principle rather than betrayal.

#1) Ron Paul supports decriminalizing marijuana and ending the War on Drugs. Obama does not.

Remember when Obamapromisedhe would decriminalize marijuana, but now his own administration continues to raid legal drug dispensaries in California? That’s a classic Obama lie: Say one thing to get elected, then turn around and do the exact opposite.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, openly supports decriminalizing marijuana and ending the failed War on Drugs. Although he doesn’tpromoterecreational drug use (and neither do I), he understands that treating weed smokers as hard-core criminals is ethical, morally and economically wrong. See my related article on Snoop Dogg and his recent drug bust in Texas:http://www.naturalnews.com/034612_S…

#2) Ron Paul supports the freedom to choose what you eat and drink, including raw milk, but the Obama administration continues to run armed raids on raw milk farmers

Under Ron Paul, the FDA would be forced to end its vicious armed raids on Amish farmers and raw dairy producers. Obama has openly allowed such armed raids to continue under his watch, refusing to even take a stand for food freedom in America.

Ron Paul understands thatliberty is the most important component of abundance. If you are not free to choose what you want to eat, smoke what you want to smoke, and choose your own type of medicine and health care, then you are a slave, not a citizen. Ron Paul seeks toget Big Government out of your life, away from your kitchen, out of your medicine cabinet and away from your children.

#3) Ron Paul would seek to eliminate FDA censorship of the scientifically-validated health claims for herbs, nutritional supplements and natural remedies

Under Bush and Obama, the FDA’s continued censorship of truthful statements about medicinal herbs, homeopathy and nutritional supplements has been fully supported by the White House. Obama is just a corporate puppet, of course, and that means he does whatever the powerful corporations tell him to do — especially the Wall Street and Big Pharma corporations. So it’s no surprise he hasn’t taken a stand to support health freedom for foods and supplements.

But Ron Paul has pushed theHealth Freedom Protection Actyear after year (http://www.naturalnews.com/019382_H…), tirelessly working tolegalize nutrition in Americaand restore Free Speech for Chinese Medicine herbs, Western medicine herbs and dietary supplements. Where Obama wants people to remain ignorant and malnourished, Ron Paul wants to restore your right to know the truth about supplements and natural medicine. As Ron Paul said in late 2005:

“The Health Freedom Protection Act will force the FDA to at last comply with the commands of Congress, the First Amendment, and the American people by codifying the First Amendment standards adopted by the federal courts. Specifically, the Health Freedom Protection Act stops the FDA from censoring truthful claims about the curative, mitigative, or preventative effects of dietary supplements, and adopts the federal court’s suggested use of disclaimers as an alternative to censorship. The Health Freedom Protection Act also stops the FDA from prohibiting the distribution of scientific articles and publications regarding the role of nutrients in protecting against disease.”

#4) Ron Paul would shut down secret military prisons like Gitmo, but Obama wants to expand those prisons and fill them with Americans!

It is now common knowledge that Obama lied when he said he would shut down Guantanamo Bay. As it turns out, Obama actually signed the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act) on New Year’s Eve (when no one would notice). The NDAA grants the U.S. government the claimed “legal” right to “indefinitely detain” U.S. citizens, throw them in secret military prisons, interrogate them and even kill them withno due process. All this can now take place without a person even beingchargedwith a crime, much less given their day in court. (http://www.naturalnews.com/034537_N…)

Obama quietly signed this bill on New Year’s Eve, hoping no one would notice. This is how low his morals have stooped, by the way — to signing traitorous bills in the dark of night, on the evening before a major holiday where half the nation is hung over from alcohol. Why no signing ceremony with full coverage by CNN, huh? Maybe it’s because nationaltraitorsdon’t want their crimes against the United States Constitution to be filmed on camera.

In signing this, Obama violated his own oath of office, nullified the U.S. Bill of Rights, and essentially committed an act of mass civil rights violations against the People of America. Rep. Ron Paul, on the other hand, is one of the very few people who has openly and sternly opposed this unlawful NDAA which blatantly and arrogantly violates the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

This single point alone outweighs everything else you might think about Ron Paul. Even if you disagree with Ron Paul on other issues, none of that really matters if you’re rotting away in a secret military prison for daring to protest in a public park, for example.Without the Bill of Rights, nothing else really mattersbecause tyranny takes over. The Bill of Rights must be defended first and at all costs. It is the only thing limiting the power of government and protecting the People from tyranny. Without it, we are all little more than slaves to a military dictatorship.

#5) Ron Paul is anti-war, Obama is pro-war.

Remember when Bush was the President, and everybody on the left was screaming about getting us out of all those wars in the Middle East? Funny how they suddenly fell silent when Obama took over the reins from Bush and continued running those same wars, isn’t it?

Ron Paul is solidly anti-war. Although he agrees with the need to “defend our shores,” he also believes that the United States has no moral authority (nor financial stability) from which to engage in running around the world as some sort of global police force, intervening in the business of nations,especially in the Middle East.

He is solidly against a war with Iran even as all the other candidates seem to be almost desperate to throwother people’s sons and daughtersonto the front lines of violent conflict. Only Ron Paul truly honors the troops bybringing them home. All the other war-mongers who say “support our troops” are really screaming, “Let our troops get killed overseas!” And unlike Gingrich, Ron Paul actually served his country as a military man, even with a child to care for:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ron-pau…

#6) Ron Paul’s wants to end the Fed and stop bailing out wealthy banksters, while Obama is a Wall Street sellout

Don’t you find it astonishing that, under the Obama administration, wall street crooks like Jon Corzine have been involved in thetheft of billions of dollarsfrom American farmers and investors, yetno one has been indicted, prosecuted or criminally chargedfor those crimes?

Under the Obama administration, white-collar crime gets a wink and a nod. That’s because people like Vice President Joe Biden actually worship Jon Corzine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm3V…). Wall Street crooks were some of the largest contributors to the Obama election campaign, and they continue to promote both Obama and Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, gets no support from the criminal banksters. That’s because he pledges to reign in the Fed, end the disastrous trillion-dollar bailouts and halt the theft of money from U.S. taxpayers by the wealthy elite.

Once again, this reason alone is enough of a reason to vote for Ron Paul.He’s the only candidate who doesn’t support the financial criminals on Wall Street. Maybe that’s why the crooked corporate media keeps smearing him in the news… they’re all tied in with the same crooks who run Wall Street.

#7) Ron Paul does not need a teleprompter to tell you what he believes, and his message has remained consistent for over 25 years

Obama needs a teleprompter to figure out what to say. That’s because he’s mainly a puppet who says what he’s told to say and signs what he’s told to sign (like the NDAA, which he of course promised he wouldn’t sign but did anyway).

Ron Paul needs no teleprompter. He doesn’t have to keep track of which lies he told in which speech to which group. That’s because Ron Paul tells the truth every time, and his message is the same whether he’s in Iowa, New Hampshire or Texas.

Ron Paul isn’t sexy, trendy or hip. Instead, he’s honest, reliable and ethical. Gee, those might be good qualities for leaders to possess, ya think?

#8) Ron Paul is not really a Republican loyalist

This should come as quite a relief to the Democrats out there. Ron Paul is really aLibertarianwho is running on the Republican ticket thanks to the necessary mechanisms of our two-party system. Most of today’s Republicans are just as corrupt as status quo democrats. They start wars, stage false flag terror events and hand out trillions of dollars in bailouts and government contracts to their corrupt buddies.

Ron Paul is none of that. He’s a humble, highly intelligent and principled individual who often votesagainsthis fellow Republicans on bills that run counter to the United States Constitution.

If Ron Paul wins as a Republican, that would of course give Republicans some additional power in Congress, but Ron Paul answers to no one other than God and the People. As all the corrupt corporate lobbyists realized long ago,Ron Paul thinks for himselfand cannot be bought off, no matter how high the offer. He sticks to principles, he honors the Constitution, and he is dedicated to improving the future of our nation, period!

#9) Ron Paul wants to legalize Free Speech (again)

Isn’t it interesting how many of the OWS protesters are now being forced to pay daily fees for the “privilege” of protesting? Gee, I thought America was a free country, and I thought you could peaceably assemble anytime you wanted and shout your grievances to your government. Guess not:http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=FF2F1…

Now the police state pepper spraying has begun, all under Obama of course, who now wants to send Americans into secret military prisons and deprive them of their due process rights. If you believe in the First Amendment and freedom of speech, youcan’tbelieve in Obama! He is the polar opposite of freedom (plus, he flat out lies a lot).

Ron Paul has fought for the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution fordecades, and he has a PERFECT voting record in defending it. He does not waver. He does not bend. He fights for your freedoms in a way that no other Democrat or Republican has ever done.

If you want Free Speech to be legal again in America, vote for Ron Paul.

#10) Ron Paul wants to criminally investigate the crooks in Washington

Most Democrats and Republicans are all crooks who just cover each other’s backs. Yeah, you raped a little kid, but I stole a billion dollars from the taxpayers, and we’ll just agree to both remain silent. Sound familiar? That’s what happens in Washington D.C. almost daily.

Ron Paul thinkselected officials should follow the law. Shock! What a concept! Along with that, he also believes that Attorney General Eric Holder should not run guns into Mexico as part of a staged scam to blame the Second Amendment. Gasp!

Who else dares to say the bureaucrats in Washington are crooks who should becriminally investigatedfor their crimes against the People? You won’t find status quo officials pursuing any of this, of course, becausethey’re all corrupt!

Only Ron Paul stands out above the lawless corruption and criminal-mindedness of the status quo in Washington D.C. He is the “anti-insider,” the one man who actually threatens the entire corrupt system (which is why the press smears him every single day). This is why the recent voting in Iowa was falsified and rigged to make sure Ron Paul wouldn’t win (this was openly admitted by the Republican leaders on local radio). The crooks in Washington absolutely do not want Ron Paul to become President, and that alone should be sufficient reason to put Ron Paul into office!

You want real hope? Real change? Support Ron Paul

If you love the way things are today — unemployment on the rise, a government drowning in debt, soldiers coming home in body bags, your friends and neighbors rotting in prison after getting caught with a little weed — then vote for Obama! He’s happy to carry on the insane policies that have led us to this point in history.

But if you wantreal changein America, support Ron Paul.Make a donation today, so that he can raise the necessary funds to clobber “Mittens” Romney and win the Republican nomination. Then we’ll have a faceoff between Barack Obama and Ron Paul, and there’s no question Paul would win that contest if the voters still have a couple of brain cells functioning when they go to vote.

Make your donations at:
www.RonPaul2012.com

Or support theSouth Carolina money bombby donating here:
http://ronpaul-2012.org/mbpledge_sc…

Source: Natural News.

*Taken from Reason. Written by John Stossel.

It would be nice if politicians and regulators left us alone. But they don’t. They always want to do more. Recently, there have been shortages of some medicines. Cancer patients can’t get drugs they need. Why not?

One reason is that a big drugmaker shut down for a year in part to meet Food and Drug Administration rules. The FDA makes it so expensive and difficult to sell drugs that there isn’t an eager pack of companies rushing to the fill the gap. The free market would provide that, but government intervention, such as low Medicare reimbursement, strangles it. So people suffer.

Does the FDA say it’s sorry for its part and back off? Of course not. Regulators almost never do that. In fact, the FDA wants more power.

CONTINUED..

My Two Cents: When idiots can’t intelligently debate, they call you names. End Two Cents.

*Taken from io9.

It seems like every other billboard and commercial in the U.S. is for a prescription drug. And yet consumers can’t buy them without a doctor’s approval. So why target consumers with these ads? Do we really have that much influence over physicians? Here’s how the U.S. became one of the only countries in the world where pharmaceutical companies peddle drugs to ordinary people.

Food and Drug Administration Loopholes

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals. Most countries banned the practice in the 1940s. The direct-to-consumer market was pioneered not in a corporate boardroom, but by Joe Davis, a regular salesman who sold packaged goods.

At the time, pharmaceutical companies marketed only to physicians through print mailings, visits, and free samples, with the patient knowing little about the drugs they were taking. The physician told them what to take, and they followed directions. About this era, Davis recalled:

CONTINUED..

*Taken from the IPCPR.

Press Release:

Retail Tobacconists and Consumers! U.S. Senate Bill Introduced! 
Senate Bill 1461 Companion Bill to HR 1639!

*Taken from Natural News.

Yesterday we reported on the FDA’s new scheme for outlawing nearly all nutritional supplements formulated after October, 1994 (http://www.naturalnews.com/032912_F…). That was just the beginning of this story, because a detailed analysis of the proposed new regulation reveals extremely disturbing revelations that would absolutely gut the nutritional products industry if these regulations are put into practice.

Below are the highlights of the most offensive and onerous portions of these proposed new FDA regulations. The source of all this information is the FDA itself, which proposes its new rules in a rather lengthy post at:http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceCom…

• Every nutritional supplement company will be forced to submit comprehensive NDI (New Dietary Ingredient) documentation for EACH ingredient used in EACH product they currently sell. This will amount tohundreds of thousandsof NDI applications flooding the FDA offices. This is a clever FDA scheme to place a huge burden of research and paperwork on every dietary supplement company in the USA. In the FDA’s own words:

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Natural News.

In the wake of hundreds of dietary supplements recently being outlawed across the EU, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has quietly unleashed a regulatory scheme that, if fully implemented, could ban virtually all dietary supplements in the USA that were formulated after 1994.

That means nearly all superfoods, multivitamins, detox supplements, and medicinal herbal products we have all come to depend on to prevent disease and boost our immune health could soon be stripped from store shelves and outlawed across the nation. I call it the “End Game” of the FDA’s war against humanity: Phase one was the enforcement of nutritional ignorance by threatening and raiding companies that dared to make truthful health claims on their own websites (http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html). Phase two involves “nuking” the entire dietary supplements industry by simply denying the use of nearly all the ingredients presently used in supplement products.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from Reason.

This Fourth of July weekend think about what truly represents freedom: Old Glory, the Liberty Bell, and an ice-cold glass of lemonade.

This month’s lineup of busybodies includes two regulars: the FDA, which is slapping new, more graphic, possibly counterproductive, warning labels on cigarette packs and the goldfish grabbers on San Francisco’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission.

But top dishonors go to the sour bureaucrat who put the squeeze on a group of kids for running a lemonade stand. Sure they were raising money for a worthy cause (pediatric cancer research), but they were doing it without a permit, and that’s why they got slapped with a $500 fine.

Presenting Reason.tv’s Nanny of the Month for June 2011: Jennifer Hughes of Montgomery County, Maryland’s Department of Permitting Services!

The episode sparked so much outrage that the county eventually backed off, but this is no isolated incident. Across America, the permit police are cracking down on pint-sized peddlers of liquid freedom.

Just over one-minute long.

“Nanny of the Month” is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Opening animation by Meredith Bragg.