Herbal Ban to be Tested in High Court

The actress Jenny Seagrove and an association representing 426 health food shops have mounted a High Court test-case to challenge one of the more bizarre riddles of our time: why are our regulatory agencies so fanatical in their wish to outlaw harmless herbal remedies and vitamin supplements safely used by millions of people, when they seem happy to allow the continued sale of licensed drugs made by pharmaceutical companies which kill thousands of people every year?

Miss Seagrove and the National Association of Health Stores (NAHS) have applied for a judicial review of the statutory order which since January 13 has made it an offence to import or sell kava-kava, taken from a Polynesian shrub used for thousands of years to make a soothing drink similar to tea. Miss Seagrove is part of the action because she believes the Medicines Control Agency and the Food Standards Agency had no legal right to forbid her to use a herb which helps her to relax and sleep.

The case prepared by Rhodri Thompson QC, of Matrix chambers, argues that both the decision to impose the ban and the way it was reached by the MCA and FSA make a complete mockery of the law. Its essence is that, under European Union and human rights law, the agencies can only override people's rights to trade in a substance like kava-kava if they can demonstrate clear public health reasons for such a ban. He argues that they have not only signally failed to make such a case, but seem wholly to have ignored their legal obligation to consider evidence given them during the statutory consultation process.

The case for a ban on health grounds appears so flimsy as to be a parody of science. Although kava-kava is regularly drunk by millions of people all over the world, the officials can only come up with 70 "possible" or "probable" cases of supposed adverse reaction associated with its use, four of which are claimed to have been fatal (none in the UK). Of these, one was an 86-year-old American who died in his sleep after drinking a cocktail of herbs, only one of which was kava-kava. It turned out that he was a diabetic with severe heart problems and under heavy medication. The three other claimed "fatalities" are similarly dubious.

On these grounds, the MCA claims its ban will prevent "one UK-based death per annum" (so far there have been none), which it claims will save "£1.4 million" a year, with further unquantified savings for the National Health Service on the treatment of liver complaints - for which it offers not a shred of hard evidence. What carries such claims into the stratosphere of absurdity, however, is that the officials who are prepared to ban this harmless herb are happy to allow the continued sale of a whole range of pharmaceutical products, licensed by the MCA itself as safe to use, from which thousands die, while hundreds of thousands more report adverse reactions.

Non-prescription pain-killers alone kill 2,000 people a year, 83 of them patients waiting for hip operations. Adverse reaction rates recorded for many licensed drugs are far higher than those claimed for kava-kava without their being banned, quite apart from the continued sale of other potentially toxic products - such as peanuts, which cause around six deaths a year, alcohol and tobacco.

The FSA and the MCA (which is funded by the pharmaceutical companies through license fees) will no doubt defend their case in the High Court with all the lavish resources at their command. But the only official response so far received by Ralph Pike, the ex-policeman who runs the NAHS, has been a letter from the MCA pointing out that it has now changed its name to the "Medicines and Herbals Regulatory Agency".
Sunday Telegraph, 11th May 2003

RESOURCES:
Ten Minutes to Midnight
Health Wars

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