Wall Street Vitamins

There was a hot item on the Drudge Report this week about the Wall Street Reform bill in Congress, with charges that a key Democrat had slipped a provision into the bill on vitamins.  Or so it seemed if you read the internet.

"Health Freedom Alert" boomed the April 27 headline at naturalnews.com.  "Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street Reform bill."

The story was picked up by dozens of websites.

"Henry Waxman's Sneak Attack on Dietary Supplements" read one.  "What do Vitamins Have to Do With Wall Street Reform?" asked another.

It combined a series of things sure to make people angry.  Waxman's support of health care reform makes him an obvious target.  The idea that Democrats are "secretly" slipping things into bills is another.  Even worse is that it's supposedly being done in a bill on financial reform.

So let's get to that provision.  Here is the link to H.R. 4173, which is the House bill on financial reforms - http://bit.ly/bXQnTK .

But if you read the bill that was approved by the House, you won't find any language about vitamins.  You won't find any language about dietary supplements.

So I kept clicking on every link I could find about this Wall Street Vitamin story.  Finally, at something called "newswithviews.com" I found a detailed article that talked about vitamins in the Wall Street bill, quoting a legal counsel for the Alliance For Natural Health.

"I want to be clear," said the ANH counsel, "The Waxman provision does not mention dietary supplements."

Okay, then what is this about?

What's at issue here, according to the Alliance for Natural Health, is an expansion of powers at the Federal Trade Commission.

Of course, no specific language is cited, so I started plowing through all 72 mentions of "Federal Trade Commission" in the House Wall Street Reform bill.

I stopped at Subtitle I, "Improvements to the Federal Trade Commission Act", which the House Financial Services says "also makes further changes to the Federal Trade Commission Act."

Now we are getting warm.

After a few more Google searches, I stumbled on something called www.advertisinglawblog.com, which wrote back in February that media companies should be aware of the FTC changes, which it said "would significantly expand the powers of the Federal Trade Commission, to include, among other things, the power to seek civil penalties and an expansive use of the "substantial assistance" enforcement."

"Such an expansive enforcement power would likely be used against legitimate companies who are otherwise innocent other than supplying a marketer that has violated the FTC Act instead of pursuing the actual wrongdoer," wrote the Lustigman law firm of New York on the blog.

I didn't find anything else about these proposed changes, which are complete and total legislative gibberish over two pages.  Do they really expand the powers of the FTC in a dramatic and oppressive way?  I'm no expert on that.

But I can say, there's nothing about vitamins in this Wall Street Reform bill.

No matter what you read on the internet.