According to NBC news, Oregon's attorney general sued General Nutrition Corporation (GNC) on Thursday, stating that the popular chain consciously sold supplements with unmarked, illegal ingredients.
The ingredients, Picamilon and BMPEA, popularly known as "hidden speed," are not approved in the U.S. and are not considered either natural or safe. However, they were hidden inside supplements with names like "JetFuel Superburn" and "Phenyl Core Weight Management," the attorney general's office stated.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum issued a statement saying it is scary to discover that certain products sold by the chain contain an ingredient that is nameless, let alone approved in the United States. When people from Oregon buy a dietary supplement, they have the right to know that the products' ingredients are safe and comply with the law. There are 25 GNC stores in Oregon that sold thousands of these products over the span of a couple of years. A spokesperson for GNC said that they won't comment on anything until the investigation is finished.
The complaint files states that when GNC sold products that contain the said components, they misrepresent the products labelling it as a lawful dietary supplement that only has legal dietary ingredients in them. Federal and state officials have been tracking down natural supplements that allegedly contain hidden drug ingredients for years. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained that weight loss, body building and male enhancement products are the biggest culprit, mostly marked as containing only plant products when in fact it is loaded with prescription drug ingredients. The FDA already sent warning letters to five companies in April letting them know that eight of their products listed the illegal BMPEA and telling them to stop selling them. The companies claimed a plant known as Acacia rigidula was where they got the chemical from, but the FDA says the plant does not contain BMPEA.
