Orrin Hatch: Drug Lord

Senator, His Son Get Boosts From Makers of Ephedra

Orrin Hatch has kept regulators at bay and benefited via campaign donations. Lobbyists linked to his son have received $2 million.

March 5, 2003

WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, the dietary supplements industry has counted on Sen. Orrin G. Hatch to fend off tighter regulation of products such as ephedra, the controversial stimulant linked to more than 80 deaths — most recently a young Baltimore Orioles baseball player.

Among other things, the Utah Republican co-wrote the 1994 law that lets supplement makers sell products without the scientific premarket safety testing required for drugs and other food additives. That law has proved a major obstacle to federal control of ephedra.

For its part, the supplements industry has not only showered the senator with campaign money but also paid almost $2 million in lobbying fees to firms that employed his son Scott.

From 1998 to 2001, while Scott Hatch worked for a lobbying firm with close ties to his father, clients in the diet supplements industry paid the company more than $1.96 million, more than $1 million of it from clients involved with ephedra.

Hatch has been one of the most fervent believers in keeping the “supplement” industry free from regulation. He has no problem with the selling of mind altering herbs over the counter as long as one of his campaign contributors is making a bundle.

Perhaps the medical marijuana advocates should just start paying off politicians directly. Clearly, Americans are free to do as many drugs as they want, as long as they go through channels and get the ok of medical experts like Orrin Hatch.

The drug war isn’t about illegal drugs, per se. It’s about who gets a piece of the action.