I know I've been silent (other than my post from someone else yesterday) about the latest ephedra ban, but as long time readers know I think the supplement is safe and effective. Currently, I am reading Applied Economics by Thomas Sowell, a work that does an excellent job conveying the importance of secondary factors of economic (or all) decisions. Sowell eloquently pens a tail of all of us driving tanks b/c that is the safest means of transportation. He also ridicules the common phrase "If it saves just one life" for being the joke that it is. Every decision and action has trade-offs and as Sowell also writes, exercising can kill you and not exercising can kill you. As free people we have the right to rationalize which risks we are willing to take and which risks we would not like to take. Yeah ephedra doesn't work for everyone and if you have a heart problem or want to use 3x the suggested max you might run into some problems and maybe even die! That is reality, just as you might die if you decide to drive 90 mph on the highway or eat McDonald's everyday (no...I don't want those to banned also!). Life is about choices and as Sowell would say, "what is the secondary cause of this action." Will we end up with more obese people who will now develop disease b/c they were unable to lose weight b/c just 100 some people died from ephedra (not to mention the fact that ephedra was LOOSELY connected to their deaths mind you)? We won't even get into the effects of ephedra's ban, which successfully helped people lose loads of weight, on people who psychologically need it to feel better about themselves and stop some self destructive behavior. This is just one more example of the ridiculousness of the police state acting as if it CARES.

Here is my main man Ron Harris' take on the ban from his daily pump email....

In other news, I just learned that ephedra will be officially banned in the United States by March of 2004. As someone who has used it safely for many years and known many others who have as well, I can't say this is much more than a publicity stunt by our government to make us feel like they really care about our health and well-being. If that were true, tobacco products would have been outlawed 25 years ago. Yes, in America we can legally drink and smoke ourselves to death, but soon using a fat-burner containing ephedrine will be against the law.