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Ephedra Banned Effective JULY 1, 2004
During late December, the FDA announced that Ephedra (both the herbal form and its ephedrine pharmaceutically manufactured form) would be banned from sales in the U.S. within 60 days. (Sales are already outlawed in New York State and a handful of other states.) Apparently, the FDA's 60-day period was given to allow for the expected lawsuits that may come from ephedra marketers, manufacturers and importers (it is a more than $1 billion annual business in the U.S. alone). The Ephedra Council is also expected to try to halt the ban via lawsuits and lobbying. While the U.S. Government has been looking at the ephedra controversy since the death of a Baltimore Orioles pitcher in 2003 was found to be caused in part by the use of the product, the sudden move to ban ephedra is still something of a surprise to U.S. companies and consumers. The WNBF and INBF base their banned substances lists on a number of factors, including potential harm to users, consideration of whether or not a substance is hormonal or a derivative/metabolite thereof, the position of the FDA in terms of legality, the position of the IOC in terms of testing, and others. As such, not all products banned by the IOC are banned by the WNBF/INBF (ephedra being one example), and some products not banned by the FDA are banned by the WNBF/INBF (androstenedione and other prohormones being the obvious examples). The WNBF/INBF have been following FDA and U.S. Government investigations into ephedra closely. As it now stands, a ban of any ephedra based product will probably be not far off for both the WNBF and INBF. The wnbf.net, inbf.net and exercisegroup.com websites will carry new information as soon as it is available. Once the WNBF/INBF decide to ban ephedra (as is expected), there will be a grace period during which athletes will be able to suspend their use of these products, and during which they will not be penalized. But once testing for ephedra begins (probably July 1, 2004), it will be banned from that point forward and no exceptions for use will be made. Stay informed and be smart! Check back to this website for more information!
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