Travis Tygart, CEO of the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), urged the country’s attorneys general to start suing supplement companies using consumer protection laws. Tygart made his comments at the 2009 National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) summer conference on June 17, 2009 in Colorado Springs. Tygart wants the attorneys general to take action at the state level to further the USADA’s agenda of preventing competitive athletes from using dietary supplements that are prohibited by their respective sports and/or the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) (”USADA chief urges states to act on supplements,” June 19).
“If consumers could run the land, I think federal regulations would change,” Tygart said. “The political reality is that, unfortunately, we have to assume they’re not going to change. But that doesn’t deter you (states) from taking action.” [...]
For the states, however, this is a relatively new issue. If they make a move, they’ll probably have to turn to consumer-protection statutes. They could also look at recovering expenses for government-paid health care costs for treatment of people who get sick from supplement use, much the way they did in lawsuits against tobacco companies.
Rick Collins and Alan Feldstein, representing the law firm Collins, McDonald and Gann, identified state attorneys general use of consumer protection laws as a potentially serious “minefield” facing supplement companies at the International Society of Sports Nutrition Conference (ISSN) on June 15, 2009. Sports nutrition companies who focus on products aimed at improving performance are particularly vulnerable to such state attorneys general actions. Read more
