NAD plans to step up efforts at self-regulating advertising in the dietary supplement industry thanks to funding from the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN), which will enable it to hire an additional attorney who will focus exclusively on supplements. The motivation behind the initiative is to put an end to deceptive or misleading claims.
The current case involving Sunpill is an example of the type of self-regulation that the dietary supplement industry has been calling for. They hope to enhance the profile of the industry as a whole and counter accusations of it being unregulated.
Finished dietary supplements need no pre-market approval under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which is part of the Food and Cosmetics Act. Only ingredients not marketed in the US before October 1994 must be approved by the FDA before being used in consumer products.
Although the supplement industry supports the DSHEA, its detractors call for greater regulation. To avoid this, the industry has pushed for self-regulation and protection of its reputation against non-DSHEA compliant products - especially those being sold via the Internet.
NAD - an investigative and judicial arm of the advertising industry's self-regulatory body that reviews national advertising - has now referred advertising made by Pure Pharmaceuticals for its Sunpill to the FTC for possible law enforcement action, citing the company's refusal to comply with certain recommendations made by the organization. The NAD said it has already requested substantiation for certain claims made in Internet advertising and the product packaging.
Examples of these claims are: "the ingredients in Sunpill have been clinically proven to be safe and effective" and "supports your bodies' systems that defend the skin against the effects of the sun."
According to the NAD, it contacted Pure Pharmaceuticals in March to draw attention to those claims that continued to appear on the company's website. The advertiser provided a list of changes made, however NAD still felt the overall message delivered to the consumer was that Sunpill can be used instead of topical sunscreen.
The NAD says Pure Pharmaceuticals is unwilling to modify additional claims such as, "during prolonged sun exposure, take two tablets" and "for maximum sun protection, ALWAYS take Sunpill". As a result, the self-regulatory body is referring the matter to FTC.
The CRN grants will allow NAD to increase by three-fold the number of dietary supplement-specific case reviews opened each year. CRN will have no role in determining which advertisements NAD chooses to review or whether the claims are determined to be truthful and accurate.
As part of CRN's project, it will give multi-year grants to NAD, which currently has a staff of six attorneys who open an average of 170 cases each year for all industries.
