One of the most rewarding things about being part of the ever-growing health freedom movement, is that there is always an upside to what often looks like a bleak and losing battle against the monolith we call “modern medicine”. In addition, some of the people you meet, even if only by phone or by e-mail, turn out to be spectacular human beings that reaffirm your faith in your fellow man. In short, ordinary people can do extraordinary things when put to the test.

If you recall, back in August, Elissa and I wrote two articles “Diabetics to be Tracked Down by Government Agents” and “The Bitter Truth About Regulation of Sugar Substitutes” which pretty well covered the sorry tale of how sugar and sugar substitutes can ruin your health, if not kill you, outright. These articles also covered the dirty and downright corrupt politics behind how and why the FDA and other government agencies protect both the sugar industry as well as Big Pharma.

We barely scratched the surface of this saga of blatant corruption in high places. For more up-to-the-minute details on the horrors of aspartame, the center of the fake sugar controversy, the focus of today’s story, and what ordinary people in New Mexico are doing about it, you may want to check out detailed information gathered by my friend, Dr. Betty Martini, head of Mission Possible at www.dorway.com. You may also want to peruse one of the key pages on this site that provides a document listing 92 symptoms caused by aspartame that had to be pried out of the FDA’s own records by Freedom of Information Act means. This should show you that the FDA is not ignorant of the real facts about aspartame.

At the time we wrote those two previous articles, we were not aware of the high drama going on in New Mexico. The man most responsible for this hullabaloo, that has been going on since 1999, is an art gallery owner, Stephen Fox, who, along with his fellow citizens, just got fed up enough about aspartame in the food supply to take action. Fox, after doing his legal homework, sat down with a pencil and wrote legislation to create a state Nutrition Council with statutory powers to challenge the FDA if it mistakenly approves known carcinogens and neurotoxic food additives. The 2005 version of the bill passed the state Senate by an overwhelming 32-1 but after corporate lobbyists arm twisted their way through the cloakroom, it was killed in the House by a filibuster on the last day of the session. [See the video on Aspartame "Sweet Misery"]

Fox and his army of outraged citizens, doctors, lawyers, activists and victims, armed with the knowledge that New Mexico has the legal authority to ban aspartame, have just turned up the volume and expanded the campaign. PLEASE NOTE FOLKS, your state may also have the same legal power to ban aspartame, so you can learn from what Fox is doing and start your own campaign to make your state’s public servants do a proper job of protecting your food supply. In fact, when we interviewed Fox, he said he would be more than happy to help activists in other states and provinces in their battle to remove aspartame from the marketplace. We already know people who are going to take him up on his generous offer. You can reach Fox at stephen@santafefineart.com.

The 2006 campaign to get rid of aspartame is now expanding on two fronts. On the first front, another Nutrition Council bill has been introduced with the political support of Governor Bill Richardson, who has enthusiastically placed it on the agenda for the 2006 short session, which he controls, doubly endorsing it with an Executive Message.

The purpose of the bill is the same as the last one - to establish, by statute, a state agency called the Nutrition Council with the statutory power to challenge the FDA if it approves known carcinogens and neurotoxic food additives.

On the second front, there is a hearing, scheduled for July 2006, convened by the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board (EIB) and the State’s Attorney General, a plan that was conceived after much public pressure from Fox and company. As you would expect, corporate lawyers from the makers of aspartame have threatened litigation to prevent the hearing from taking place, though, at the moment, Governor Richardson is standing firm that there needs to be a fair hearing.

One wonders on what grounds such a lawsuit would be based? Is it the need to prevent public servants from doing their job to protect the public? Or, more to the point, the need to protect Big Pharma’s profits over the lives and health of innocent consumers?

Elissa’s and my fellow health freedom activist, Jim Turner, who has been the principle critic of aspartame from his earliest days as one of Ralph Nader’s Raiders and author of The Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on Food Protection and the FDA, has already provided New Mexico officials his official legal position on aspartame in the marketplace, which you can read in its entirety. In it, Turner reviews his 35-year history spent fighting this poison. He states that aspartame violates both federal and New Mexico food adulteration statutes and that the FDA approval process was so flawed as to be legally void.

Another high-profile attorney, Edward M. Johnson, now retired after an illustrious career which resulted in his being listed for the past 15 years in “Who’s Who in American Law”, also weighed in on this campaign. Johnson, noted for his expertise in several related areas of law including the relationship between federal and state statutes as well as now being an owner of a distributorship of health and wellness products, not to mention being a victim of aspartame-caused brain tumors, offered his legal position to state officials which also includes the comment, “The banning of aspartame is not only well within your powers, but is in fact a long overdue service to New Mexico’s consumers who are ingesting this product unknowing its toxicity.”

“You are to be commended for having moved this rule change along this far to take this much needed step of banning aspartame in New Mexico in order to protect the health, safety and welfare of the citizens of the State of New Mexico. Other states will follow New Mexico’s example.”

H.J. Roberts, M.D. F.A.C.P., F.C.C.P. one of America’s premier physicians, and author of four books on the dangers of aspartame, has written directly to Governor Richardson several times about the need to curtail and ban aspartame’s use. In a phone interview for this article, Dr. Roberts told us, “Aspartame should not have been approved in the first place. It was approved arbitrarily and unilaterally on the advice of in house FDA scientists. However, the General Accounting Office and a public board of inquiry both agreed that it should not be approved. After more than 20 years of clinical encounters and research and newer information, we now know that it constitutes an imminent public health hazard. New Mexico should be given credit for a lot of courage in looking into this matter because the Federal Government has not pursued it in any way it should have considering the large number of complaints.” http://sunsentpress.com

As to be expected in a David versus Goliath fight of this magnitude, lots of people get involved and, by coincidence, the clamor about the evils of aspartame is now being heard 'round the world'.

In September 2005, The Ecologist, a major British scientific publication, published a 17-page cover story on the tangled web of deceit surrounding the approval of aspartame by the FDA and other regulatory bodies worldwide.

In addition, the publication of a 2005 Italian study on the carcinogenicity of aspartame, prompted British MP, Roger Williams, a scientist, after a year of looking into the safety of aspartame, to state what he found “truly horrified” him. What he told his colleagues on the floor of Commons was that “sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been notable by their absence from approval of aspartame.”

The specific statute Stephen Fox found that gives legs to the whole New Mexico campaign, and perhaps in your state as well, is as follows:

“A food shall be deemed to be adulterated

1. if it contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious;

2. if it contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance which is unsafe, and

3. if it consists in whole or in part of …decomposed substance, or if it otherwise unfit.”

What now remains to be seen is if New Mexico officials will buckle under the weight of corporate manipulation and/or outright intimidation. The following letter sent to Dr. Betty Martini, by New Mexico’s Chief Deputy Attorney General, Stuart M. Bluestone, outlines the authority of the Attorney General’s Office, and gives some assurances. We do hope this is the case.

“Dear Dr. Martini:

Thank you for your letter raising concerns about aspartame and/or the presence of mercury/thimerosal in vaccines. We respect your sincerity and appreciate you taking the time to write us about public health issues.

We, at the Attorney General’s Office are lawyers, not scientists or public policy makers. Policy decisions based on the review of available evidence are made by the Governor’s appointed policymakers, e.g., the Environmental Improvement Board or the Board of Pharmacy. Of course, the Legislature and the Governor also ultimately determine public policy for our State.

We may provide legal advise, subject to federal and state laws, constitutional provisions and court cases, to elected and appointed state officials. We always try to do the best job we can to provide objective legal opinions. As we review the relevant governing laws, please be assured that we will be mindful of the important need to protect the public health, safety and welfare.

Thank you for contacting us.”

 

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HOW YOU CAN HELP RIGHT NOW!

While it is sometimes hard to believe, the most powerful political force in the world is the will of the people. When enough people demand justice, politicians, public servants, and even those who run global corporations, can be brought to their senses to act in the public interest.

THE NEW MEXICO ACTION MATTERS TO ALL OF US.

Ordinary citizens of New Mexico found a law on the books that establishes that the state has the authority to protect the public from unsafe foods.

Ordinary citizens of New Mexico are promoting a bill to establish a permanent agency to watchdog the food supply.

Ordinary citizens of New Mexico have successfully petitioned the Environmental Improvement Board and the Attorney General’s Office to hold honest public hearings on the safety of aspartame.

So what is the problem? There will be two meetings in the first weeks of January in Santa Fe, New Mexico that could dramatically alter future events, or, for that matter, put an end to what the ordinary citizens of New Mexico have expressly stated as their will. One meeting is with the Attorney General’s Office and the Environmental Improvement Board and the other with the Pharmacy Board. At those meetings we hope that the Attorney General’s Office makes a recommendation that the July hearing goes forward as planned. So, if we are to act, it must be now to make sure this happens.

Once the July hearing is secured, it’s up to the people to keep the heat on to make sure it will be fair and impartial and no funny stuff goes on behind closed doors among the power brokers. Since what happens in Santa Fe in July has national and international ramifications, it is up to all of us to lend a hand to those in New Mexico who have done a spectacular job bringing the aspartame scandal to public view.

Consequently, we ask you to spend a few minutes during your New Year’s weekend to send this article to all your friends and urge them to join you in deluging the capital of New Mexico with e-mail messages from all over in support of the ordinary people of New Mexico.

Please have these e-mail messages sent to:

Governor Bill Richardson c/o Chief of Staff Dave Contarino at: dave.contarino@state.nm.us

Please thank the Governor for putting Senate Bill 525 to create the Nutrition Council on the Call and giving it his Executive Message.

Please tell him you support states' rights to regulate harmful products especially now when it is obvious the FDA has failed in its regulatory responsibilities on a number of drugs and other products such as aspartame.

Attorney General,
The Honorable Patricia Madrid
ewood@ago.state.nm.us

Deputy General, Stuart Bluestone
sbluestone@ago.state.nm.us

Please tell both Ms. Madrid and Mr. Bluestone that you support their desire to defend New Mexico's right to challenge the safety of an FDA-approved product such as aspartame, particularly when it is so obvious it should never been approved at all.

© 2005 Carolyn Dean - All Rights Reserved