Ralph Fucetola, JD, a.k.a. the Vitamin Lawyer, attended a meeting on November 13, 2013, with former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson of the Libertarian Party along with healthcare providers and concerned citizens to discuss the issues of health freedom and Obamacare.
The meeting, which was recorded on video, begins with Fucetola asking Johnson about his views on health freedom and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Johnson's response:
"Well, I really believe in free markets. I think that the FDA really restricts our choices. And what are attorneys for? Wouldn't attorneys do a much better job of assigning and bringing about justice to drug companies that were actually egregious in what they sold to the public as safe? I think the FDA really has acted as a good housekeeping seal of approval that has limited liability as opposed to actually assigning liability due. So, we could do without an FDA. There's actually a way to not have an FDA, and we would be a healthier country as a result; we'd have more choices."
Fucetola then states, "You know, the Natural Solutions Foundation has an interim measure that supports the idea of divesting the FDA of its food authority, because we feel that having food and drugs in the same federal bureaucracy is a recipe for disaster."
Johnson: "Nobody wants to say that we don't want to have safe food, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the government is accomplishing that. And that's what I want to say, is that, as well intentioned as the government is, are they really making food any healthier? [W]ith the FDA, do we not still have incidents where people die, because the food is contaminated? This is something that will go on for perpetuity, and companies that sell this food are liable and are held liable regardless of government interference."
Fucetola then brings up the issue of food and GMO labeling, which is something that Johnson, who suffers from celiac disease, fully supports. He says that honest labeling should be required for food companies and that the government should not ban substances like trans-fats. Rather, they should be labeled so that informed consumers can make choices for themselves, then harmful substances would be phased out through natural free market laws; i.e., nobody would sell what nobody would want to buy.
The video then cuts to a meeting with several individuals at New York City's Players Club. The rest of the discussion covers many topics, including the FDA safeguarding pharmaceutical companies rather than assigning due liability, vaccine schedules, health freedom, how Healthcare.gov is just the tip of the Obamacare iceberg that threatens to sink the United States, and divesting food authority from the FDA.
In response to concerns about how supplements and such would be regulated without the FDA, one meeting attendee notes, "We do not have an electronic safety administration, but every single [computer tablet], you buy it in a box, there will be two marks: UL and CE." CE is the European Union's government safety organization; in the United States, UL, Underwriters Laboratories, is a private industry coalition dedicated to public safety. The fact that we are able to rely on the private sector to ensure the safety of electronic devices proves that the FDA is wholly unnecessary.
Fucetola highlights the ineffectiveness of the FDA: "Half of the drugs that the FDA approves are, within five years of approval... withdrawn from the marketplace due to serious side effects."
"What it really means is that the general population is the final experimental subject, if you will."
Watch the video for yourself to hear the full discussion between this group of libertarian thinkers and the viable, long-term solutions they propose to contemporary issues that the two-party system continues to ignore at the peril of America's future.
