Editor,
The Hawaii legislative session is considering House Bill 2680 and Senate Bill 2506 to ban the artificial sweetener and neurotoxin aspartame.
This is wonderful news coming from Hawaii. The legislators and their bill drafters saw the merit in keeping almost all of the same language from the 2006 and 2007 New Mexico bills, especially regarding the state's rights and its obligation to protect the citizens' health, which are not "pre-empted by massive failures at the FDA."
These bills were overwhelmed and eviscerated in New Mexico by some of the most vicious corporate lobbyists I have ever encountered, representing Ajinomoto of Japan, the world's largest manufacturer of both aspartame and MSG, as well as their duped American corporate henchmen and partners-in-poisoning who use massive amounts of aspartame, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Altria, Kraft and others.
Make no mistake: the same corporations and even more will show up in Honolulu. Probably including Wrigley's Gum, all of whose products contain aspartame, which is metabolized as methanol and formaldehyde.
These corporations have everything to lose if such bills advance and lead to the inevitable product-liability and personal-injury suits from those damaged by aspartame, who number in the hundreds of millions, despite their corporate-serving propaganda and lies.
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My most profound appreciation goes to the numerous fine Hawaii activists who brought up these imperative issues, and to Sen. J. Kalani English, chairman of the International Committee, and Rep. Calvin Say, Speaker of the House, both Democrats, who see the merit and need to protect the health of all Hawaiians - no matter what duplicity is perpetuated by the top brass and corporate lackeys at the FDA. The Senate bill is cosponsored by Suzanne Chun Oakland, chairperson of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, and we sincerely commend these fine legislators for this pre-emptive and protective legislation.
I hope Hawaii legislators don't capitulate to the corporate-serving theories, advanced by corporate lobbyists, that states do not have the right, power or obligation to challenge any kind of federal authority, such as an FDA pronouncement.
When aspartame's history of approval is examined, it will be clear that the FDA commissioner, in 1981, was under a strong influence to approve this chemical, no matter who objected in the medical and scientific community, because the guy from former President Ronald Reagan's "Transition Team" who gave him the job, Donald Rumsfeld, had been CEO of the aspartame manufacturer G.D. Searle. Rummy made $25 million off this deal alone.
Stephen Fox
Daily Lobo reader
