The FDA Sides With Science, and Kids Are Safer For It

Last month marked a little-known legal anniversary with big-time consequences for Americans’ public health: Back in July 2012, British biopharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline reached a record $3 billion settlement with the Justice Department, pleading guilty to promoting its profitable antidepressants for unapproved uses and distributing phony data to push the drugs on children. 

The GlaxoSmithKline case, which resulted in what was until then the largest health care fraud payout in U.S. history, established new standards for the regulation of misleading marketing by drug companies and supercharged skepticism toward the broader pharmaceutical industry.

The extraordinary settlement also helped set the stage for the modern Make America Healthy Again movement, specifically its emphasis on natural medicines and alternative treatments over the prescription pills and Big Pharma products that too many U.S. consumers have come to rely on.

Now, over a dozen years later, it’s only fitting that the nation’s top health agencies — led by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — are again rejecting false marketing and half-baked pseudoscience in favor of Mother Nature, galvanizing Americans against a deadly new threat to kids and communities across the country: 7-hydroxymitragynine, also known as 7-OH.