Linda Bacon, Ph.D., an author and professor of nutrition at City College of San Francisco, explained that drugs marketed as supplements are loosely regulated largely because of the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), signed into law by President Clinton.
The DSHEA transferred responsibility for ensuring that a supplement and the ingredients in it are effective and safe for consumption to the manufacturers themselves. Supplement producers need not get the FDA’s approval before selling their products. If the agency later discovers that a supplement is unsafe, it typically issues an advisory, like the ones discussed above, but does not remove the item from the market.
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