Down to the wire

You might have seen my email last week regarding our ongoing campaign to stop potentially misleading and dangerous claims on health products. In short, we’re down to the wire on this one and we think it could go either way depending on how Senators choose to vote. The difference between winning and losing could be the difference of a phone call, and that’s why we’re asking you to place a call to your state or territory Senator to see if we can get a win for consumers.

We have a page with a script and all the contact details you need to stop fake claims on vitamin products.

Please take a stand against fake claims and make your call today.

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It is worthwhile considering this document.

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Meh. If people want to waste their money on some supplements, I don’t mind. Prescription drugs kill a few thousand people in Australia each year. Supplements maybe 1? And plenty of prescription drugs approved by authorities have later had to be recalled for harming tens of thousands of people worldwide.

As you can tell, I’m not a big fan of big pharma. And they hate big supplement. So enemy of my enemy and all that…

I received the following reply:

Thank you for your writing to me about the concerns you have with the proposed legislation for the Therapeutic Goods (Permissible Indications) Determination No.1 of 2018.

As I indicated in my earlier email the matter was referred to our Labor Caucus meeting for discussions.

These discussions were led by Tony Zappia who is Labor’s spokesperson and Shadow Assistant Minister for Medicare.

Tony engaged in many conversations with a range of stakeholders on the impacts that could arise if the regulation was disallowed.

We were advised, and have accepted, that disallowing the regulation could have significant unintended consequences for the listing system.

The discussions held by Tony also revealed that while the Government’s new system is clearly deficient, it is a slight improvement over the previous regime - which had even less transparency for consumers.

I can assure you that Labor is committed to improving consumer protections for medicines.

That’s why we have decided that if we win the next federal election we will require disclaimers on traditional medicines not backed up by medical or scientific evidence.

This change would be in line with a recommendation of the Review of Medicines and Medical Devices Regulation, completed in 2015.

The Government has failed to implement this recommendation.

The types of claims to which you refer are not new and were allowed prior to the introduction of the Permitted Indications list on 6 March 2018 - but we do realise there are concerns this list legitimises misleading information.

Thank you again for your email. I will continue to speak with my Labor colleagues on issues around consumer protections for medicines.

Claire

Senator Claire Moore
Labor Senator for Queensland
P: 07 3252 7101 ║ F: 07 3252 8957 ║
E: senator.moore@aph.gov.au
W: www.clairemoore.net

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