The majority of Canadians use natural health products (NHPs). They do so because the products help them to stay healthy and prevent disease. They also use NHPs to regain their health when they are suffering. NHPs deliver real health benefits. Everyone, Health Canada included, agrees with this. If NHPs deliver real health benefits, then we need to acknowledge that taking NHPs away creates a real health risk.

NHP regulation
On January 1, 2004, the new Natural Health Products Regulations came into force. These new regulations were brought about by consumer and industry demands for regulations that treat NHPs fairly. Health Canada had been using the chemical pharmaceutical drug regulations to drive NHPs off of the market. Consumers, worried that products they rely on to stay healthy were being taken away, organized to create political pressure for change. The consumer message to Ottawa was that they wanted their access to natural health products protected.

The NHP Regulations were Health Canada's response to this pressure. The problem is that the new regulations mirror the old chemical drug regulations that everyone agreed were inappropriate for NHPs. You cannot solve a problem by using the same strategy that caused the problem. Repackaging the chemical drug regulations as a solution for products being taken away from consumers is simply an attempt to retry the strategy that endangered NHPs in the first place. Predictably the strategy is not working.

Up to 75 percent disappearing
Under the new regulations, a NHP has to be licensed by Health Canada to remain on the market. Although Health Canada only publishes partial information on the failure rate of license applications, it is generally accepted that roughly 60 percent of all product license applications fail. Once an application is refused or withdrawn, the NHP has to be taken off of the market. If this trend continues, then 60 percent of NHPs will disappear. The trend is expected, however, to get worse.

Most of the license applications considered so far have been for single ingredient products. These are the products that should be the easiest to license. Many expect that the license failure rate for multi-ingredient products will be as high as 80 percent. When all is said and done there could be an overall failure rate of 70 to 75 percent.

Manufacturers are becoming very aware of the high failure rate of license applications. Retailers are just starting to become aware. Most consumers have no idea that very soon 70 to 75 percent of the NHPs they rely upon for their health may be gone.

Information usually trickles from manufacturers to retailers to consumers, making the average consumer the last to know what has been happening behind the scenes.

Side effects
In many cases, Canadians rely upon NHPs for their very survival. They are the only products that work for them and they have no other alternatives. In other cases, people relying on NHPs could get relief to some degree from the pharmaceutical industry, but then they would face the risks of that industry.

The pharmaceutical industry presents a dramatically higher risk than the NHP industry. I am not aware of a single death caused by a NHP in Canadian history. This cannot be said of the pharmaceutical industry. In one risk analysis I saw, deaths caused by pharmaceutical products were said to be one of the two leading causes of death in Canada.

If consumers who rely upon NHPs are forced to turn to the pharmaceutical industry, there will be deaths and side effects. Sadly this has become a life-and-death issue.

Shawn Buckley is a lawyer who specialized in assisting manufacturers of NHPs navigate the Food and Drugs Act and regulations. www.nhppa.org

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