This is a VERY important post for ALL of my Canadian followers, and even for those of you who have Canadian friends and family members.
Health Canada is proposing to regulate “Natural Health Products” in much the same way that they regulate drugs. But the big problem is that natural health products are NOT drugs!
What they are proposing is a 3 stage regulation process with any products that have not undergone rigorous scientific testing to prove their effectiveness being relegated to the highest category, where they need to be prescribed by a medical doctor.
This will affect a very wide range of natural health products from vitamin and mineral supplements, other dietary supplements (probiotics, fish-oils, digestive enzymes and more), homeopathic remedies, herbal remedies, traditional Chinese remedies and even Essential Oils.
So what this means to us, as the consumer is that a very large number of these products will disappear from the shelves and we will not be able to purchase them. Some will remain (if they do the expensive testing that Health Canada requires – costs that they will pass on to us, the consumer), so the cost of the product will rise astronomically. Others will only be available with a Dr’s prescription – can you imagine going to your already overworked Dr to get a prescription to buy fish-oil supplements?
What this is going to achieve is to take away our rights as a Canadian citizen to decide on our own health matters, to make decisions as to what supplements we want to take, what route we want to take with our health. It will reduce our options leaving us no choice but to buy what “Big Pharma” produces in the way of drugs, because there will be no natural options available to us.
And for those of you who love essential oils (as I do!), you may well find that you cannot buy your essential oils – they are not specifically mentioned in this proposal, but they are just as “unproven” as homeopathy and many of the other products that are specifically mentioned. Can you imagine going to your Dr and saying “I want you to prescribe me Lavender Essential Oil to help me sleep?”… First of all, he/she is most likely not going to know what Lavender Essential Oil is, he/she will not know the appropriate dosage of it (so how will it be prescribed!) and then you would have to find a pharmacy that carries it… That is just NOT going to happen! What the Dr will do instead is write you a prescription for one of “Big Pharma’s” sleeping meds… because that is what they are taught about in med school.
Should Canada’s already overworked Dr’s really have this kind of workload put on them in addition to dealing with already sick people? NO!
So, what can we do? Well first of all, there is a simple way to send a letter to your MP expressing your concern about this. Go to THIS link. All you have to do is follow the simple instructions and the letter will be automatically be sent to your MP.
Then, if you are Canadian, PLEASE share this on your Facebook feed and tell all your friends and family. And if you are not Canadian, please share this with all your Canadian friends!
For the few of you who actually live in Calgary, you can also visit Community Natural Foods as they have a TON of information about this and postcards that you can fill in that will be sent to Parliment at no cost to you.
This is the only way we can protect our rights to be able to make decisions about what health care products we use and what we put in our bodies.
If enough people send letters to their MP’s saying that they do not agree, this will not go through.
We can stop this happening!
salixisme - AIP Living 