News

New Mexico Media Outlets Peddle Pseudoscience for State Department of Health - by Dr. Ken Stoller

How to Prevent Corporate Lobbyists from Destroying Your Health and Welfare - by Stephen Fox

The Renewable Energy Legislative Agenda - by Ben Luce

Sierra Club 2007 Legislative Priorities Focus on Cleaner Energy - by Tom Robey

Legislative Priorities of CVNM and New Mexico’s Conservation Community - by Leanne Leith

How to Prevent Corporate Lobbyists from Destroying Your Health and Welfare
by Stephen Fox

It is horrifying to see first-hand what a travesty of Democracy results when corporate lobbyists manipulate State Legislative processes, especially if you are concerned about rudimentary efforts to improve consumer protection in New Mexico. To a large extent, “good” people are alienated from the political process, preferring to dismiss all of it as corrupt and/or impossible. That perception drives them into a feeling of powerlessness and further alienation. This is exactly what the corporations want, so they can continue their control and manipulation through paid lobbyist pressure on particular Legislative committees. But all that has to change.

The scene was ghastly last year in the hearings on the bill to ban the artificial sweetener known as Aspartame (Methanol/Formaldehyde/Diketopiperazine) sponsored by Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino. Aspartame also masquerades under trade names such as Nutra Sweet, Equal and others. Any diet food or beverage could have the poison in it, so check the label carefully. The Japanese Ajinomoto corporation - the largest manufacturer of Aspartame in the world - hired the well-connected New Mexico lobbying firm, Butch Maki and Associates, for indiscernible amounts of money. Mr. Maki is a friend and former aide to Governor Richardson. They also hired top gun attorney Richard Minzner, former Majority Leader in the NM House, to put the screws to the bill in the place it was most vulnerable: its first committee hearing in Senate Public Affairs.

Despite two excellent physicians there to testify for banning Aspartame, Pediatric Cardiologist, Grant La Farge, and Pediatrician Ken Stoller, and despite massive amounts of articles and letters from Aspartame poisoning victims, the corporations won with a vote of 5-2 to table the bill, killing it for 2006. Mr. Minzner told the Committee it was irresponsible and illegal to even think about challenging an FDA approved chemical. Antonio Anaya, Vice President of Coca Cola New Mexico told the Committee a monstrous lie, that Coca Cola would lose 600 jobs in New Mexico if aspartame were banned. No one on the committee challenged the specious illogic of such a statement. Several members continued to guzzle their Diet Sodas while the testimony continued. Perhaps it is absurd to entrust decisions about the effects of formaldehyde on New Mexico’s children to people who can’t even recognize the harm they are doing to themselves. But try we must.

No victims were able to change their schedule to be able to sit through lengthy hearings in order to speak; no parents concerned about autism or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder could make it. No one from the New Mexico Department of Health was there to encourage the committee to at least use the precautionary principle to move the bill forward, to take an obviously harmful chemical off the market. Only the paid lobbyists could wait to speak, and they were quick to maintain that it has been on the market for 25 years (since its approval was forced through the FDA by Donald Rumsfeld, when he was CEO of G.D. Searle) and is now used in hundreds of nations.

No statisticians nor epidemiologists from the Health Department or Medical School were there to talk about the mountain of evidence that the methanol and formaldehyde metabolic byproducts of aspartame cause serious neurodegenerative harm, which might have something to do with the spike in statistics for many afflictions in the USA, including Multiple Sclerosis and Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

No one came in 2006 from the Attorney General’s office to say that it was the AG’s opinion that our state could challenge an obviously flawed FDA approval, and that we didn’t have to continue to slavishly capitulate to the multinational corporations who rammed the approval through, nor to their subsequent efforts to silence and eviscerate any real efforts to protect the health of New Mexicans.

No one came from the Governor’s office to note that 22 out of 42 New Mexico State Senators had signed a letter to him asking him to put the bill on the Legislative Call for the short session in 2006, the agenda for which Gov. Richardson controlled. This was again the result of the intense private lobbying efforts of Maki, Minzner, and Michael Stratton of Colorado, a western states Democratic Party superconductor and member of the Presidential Nominating Commission, whose apparent job it was to remind the Governor that he shouldn’t make such large corporations angry by putting the bill to ban Aspartame on his “call.”

Several hundred members of the Organic Consumers’ Association responded to one of their Action Alerts and sent so many emails to Governor Richardson asking him to support the bill to ban Aspartame by putting it on his “call” over one weekend that the email capacity from the Governor’s web page was entirely filled.
What is new in 2007 that may make things more hopeful for the bill to Ban Aspartame?

First of all, Senator Ortiz y Pino hasn’t abandoned it and will introduce it again early in the session. The Legislators are better educated; and some of them have quit Diet Sodas and Sugarless Chewing Gum entirely. Their constituents are better educated too, enough so that we can really make this legislation a mandate if we take the time to write to legislators, to Governor Richardson and to Lt. Governor Denish.

During the Interim, 21 NM Legislators signed two letters from Senator Ortiz y Pino to President Bush, FDA Commissioner Von Eschenbach, and US Health Secretary Leavitt, asking them to rescind the approval for Aspartame as soon as possible. The letter cited the “Early Day Motion” of the British Parliament by the Welsh Member Roger Williams, which was signed by 46 members of Parliament and asked for an immediate Aspartame ban in the United Kingdom.

Von Eschenbach responded with corporate pleasantries, but did admit that the FDA was still reviewing the Ramazzini Report from Italy which conclusively proved that Aspartame causes serious cancer in rats. The FDA has had the Ramazzini Report since February 2006.

Governor Richardson has postured in private conversations but not in public speeches that states have to take back their rights in the realm of consumer protection. Perhaps, if enough people write to him again as constituents to publicly support the bill to ban Aspartame, he will do so loudly and clearly in 2007.

The best cause for optimism, frankly, is that we have a new Attorney General, Gary King. With a Ph. D. in Chemistry, and his long tenure as Chairman of the House Consumer Affairs Committee in the 1980’s and 1990’s, King understands clearly not only the need to prevent ghastly medical problems from chemicals like Aspartame, but also the legalities of challenging FDA approval when a product continues to do such harm.

Please take the time to write, email, telephone, and fax Attorney General Gary King to ask him to do three things:

1. Write a clear letter to the New Mexico Legislators in both houses before the Legislative Session starts, all 112 of them, telling them that they have the power and the obligation to create a higher consumer protection standard than is possible during this current era of massive corporate control of the federal FDA, especially in terms of preventing further medical harm from Aspartame.
2. File a request for a Federal Injunction, with New Mexico as the Plaintiff, in which a Federal Judge will both order the FDA commissioner to rescind the approval for Aspartame and will order the corporations involved to cease and desist the manufacturing of Aspartame as well as adding it to their products.
3. Open files on behalf of New Mexico victims of Aspartame poisoning, the brain tumor deaths, those with multiple sclerosis, memory loss, sudden cardiac arrest deaths, and others from the FDA’s own list of 92 Aspartame-linked symptoms, a list they discontinued in 1995. Like the tobacco victims with lung cancer and emphysema, eventually punitive and exemplary damage suits could be filed on behalf of these victims by the State of New Mexico.

If you take the time to do that within 72 hours of reading this, talking with your legislators should be easy. Their contact information is all located at the website for the New Mexico Legislature. If you have friends and relatives in other parts of the state, please forward this letter on to them.

This year, the corporate lobbyists will be out in droves on the Aspartame bill, even more than last year. While you are enjoying life, going about your business, raising your children, and making your living, they are up in the New Mexico Capitol hammering on Legislators, preying on their lack of information, soothsaying them into acquiescence and acceptance of the FDA’s ostensible pre-emptive power. In the corridors of power on the 3rd and 4th floor of the Capitol, and even on the First Floor, where we find the offices of the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the NM Senate, these lobbyists lurk and stalk. Both Ben Lujan and Ben Altamirano are very nice guys, and skilled leaders, highly committed to public service in its purest forms, particularly adept at questions and methods of Government Finance. But unfortunately, they want to try to keep everyone “happy.” When it comes to true consumer protection efforts, you can’t keep the corporations happy if you are going to protect the people, a point which we must really make clear to all of the Legislators, particularly Sen. Altamirano, and even clearer to Governor Richardson. Senator Altamirano has been hammered by Washington corporate lobbyists into hesitating to sponsor the 2007 New Mexico Nutrition Council, which he sponsored in 2006 as SB 217.

New Mexicans should make clear to Governor Richardson that one clear path to the White House might be through implementing a massive new era of Consumer Protection in New Mexico, the likes of which have never before been seen. This point is already clear to Attorney General King, whom you only need to encourage and reinforce in this regard.

Several key legislators who usually seem to side with the Corporations are Senator Shannon Robinson of Albuquerque, Chairman of the Senate Corporations Committee (shannon.robinson@nmlegis.gov) and Representative Debbie Rodella of San Juan Pueblo, presumed Chairman of the House Business and Industry Committee (debbie.rodella@nmlegis.gov).

Real Consumer Protection must be extended to include food products, food additives, pharmaceutical products, environmental pollution, pesticides, herbicides, waste spills, mining, oil and gas effluents, Thimerosal/Mercury in vaccines for adults and children, and many other problems.

The most pressing need, the one that affects 70% of the Adults and 40% of the Children in New Mexico, is permanently ridding our state of Aspartame. This will happen if you write letters and talk with your Legislators. It won’t if you don’t.

If you have further questions, please examine this website: www.unitednationsundersecretarygeneralfornutrition.org or contact Stephen Fox at (505) 983-2002 or stephen@santafefineart.com

Contact emails and phone numbers: New Mexico Legislature: http://legis.state.nm.us, Governor Richardson (505) 476-2200 [http://www.governor.state.nm.us/contact.php], Lt. Governor Denish [http://www.ltgovernor.state.nm.us/contact.html], President Pro Tem of Senate Ben Altamirano [erlinda.campbell@nmlegis.gov], Speaker Ben Lujan [ben.lujan@nmlegis.gov], Senator Shannon Robinson [shannon.robinson@nmlegis.gov], Senator Steve Komadina, M.D. [Ranking Minority Member of Public Affairs; komadina@steve.komadina.com], Senator Gaye Kernan Member of Public Affairs [ggkern@valornet.com], Senator Diane Snyder [Ranking Minority Member of Senate Corporations; hdsnyder@spinn.net], Senator Mark Boitano [Member Senate Corporations Committee: boitanom@aol.com] Senator Phil Griego [Member Senate Corporations Committee: senatorgriego@yahoo.com] Representative Debbie Rodella, Chair of House Business and Industry [debbie.rodella@nmlegis.gov] Attorney General Gary King, Ph. D. 505 827-6000 (call for email address)