Washington, D.C., December 11, 2014—The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), the leading trade association for the dietary supplement and functional food industry, today welcomed the passage of the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act (DASCA) of 2014, a measure that will protect consumers from potentially dangerous anabolic steroids falsely marketed as dietary supplements. The bill will now be sent to the President’s office to be signed into law.
“We are extremely grateful to Congress for passing this important piece of legislation and particularly want to acknowledge Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and Reps. Joe Pitts (R-PA) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ), sponsors of the bill respectively in the Senate and the House. We are thankful as well to other legislators and industry stakeholders who kept the serious issue of designer anabolic steroids in front of key colleagues in Congress,” said CRN President & CEO Steve Mister. “Passage of this bill was one of CRN’s top legislative priorities this year, as responsible member companies want to do all that they can to solve the problem of anabolic steroids illegally being sold as dietary supplements.”
CRN’s commitment to protecting consumers from dangerous substances masquerading as dietary supplements is longstanding. CRN lobbied Congress to pass the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 and has tenaciously led the charge for the dietary supplement industry since that time, ramping up activities in 2014 with outreach to legislative offices on Capitol Hill in support of DASCA, underscoring its value to consumers as well as to responsible dietary supplement companies.
DASCA will protect consumers as well as responsible companies by empowering the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) with new tools to identify and rapidly respond when illegal drugs in the form of new designer anabolic steroids are falsely marketed as dietary supplements. For instance, the law calls for DEA to address products that are “substantially similar” to anabolic steroids and that have been illegally marketed to promote muscle growth. DASCA’s provisions include new DEA authority to place new anabolic steroids on the DEA Controlled Substance List and new criteria for placing additional anabolic steroids on the list going forward that will better enable DEA to identify and catalog new chemicals. DASCA will allow DEA to quickly crack down on criminals creating new anabolic substances that closely resemble red-flagged counterparts listed, but altered minimally with the intent of evading enforcement.
“When criminal outliers are not stopped, not only does it put consumers at risk, but it unjustly blackens the reputation of responsible dietary supplement companies that manufacture and market legitimate, high-quality and beneficial supplements for sports nutrition and performance,” Mr. Mister observed. “The passage of DASCA brings a welcome protection against that.”