This NY Times reporter is a moron. People who have taken ephedra as a dietary suppliment and died from it can perhaps be givin a pass, though putting something into your mouth without knowing what it'll do to you isn't very bright.
I DO NOT know how ephedra wound up on the market as a dietary suppliment or why. Ephedra is an herb. The volitile chemicals in it are used to treat anaphylactic shock. Synthetic ephedra is the powerful drug epinephrine.
I take epinephrine whenever I'm stung by a wasp because otherwise I'll go into anaphylactic shock and die. I don't know of anyone stupid enough to shoot it up as a DIETARY SUPPLIMANT.
Taking such a drug as a DIETARY supplimant makes as much sense as taking insulen capsules or nitro pills as dietary suppliments.
Banning this powerful drug as a dietary suppliment is NOT an election ploy. It saves lives. Period.
While some herbs are GREAT as dietary suppliments, remember that the REASON we have always used herbs is because they contain chemical compounds - drugs. NEVER take an herbal suppliment without knowing what makes it WORK on you. Obviously, you can't trust the companies that put this stuff on the market not to sell you something that will hurt or kill you.
Keeping downer cows out of the food chain...well, as long as some moron somewhere still thinks they're smarter than everyone else around them and adds brains and spinal cords to the food chain, it won't work, but I suppose it'll make people afraid of having their brains turn into mush after eating a steak feel more safe.
I notice out NY Times Einstein makes no mention of where the real - national and VERY intense - investigation is taking place. Well...it's beyond the intellectual capacity of the inner-city elite, so it's better that he doesn't bother.