News You Can't Use: Oregon AG Accuses Retailer GNC of Selling Drug-Spiked Dietary Supplements

Are you looking to get on some "gear" but haven't been able to figure out that the guy who comes to your gym wearing a suit once a week, isn't at all muscular and promptly disappears into the locker room for thirty minutes before leaving without doing any exercises is the person you need to talk to? If this is the case you might want to consider the powders, placebos and potions offered by the General Nutrition Center, located in rapidly dying shopping malls near you. Or maybe not, since as best as I can tell from skimming a lengthy, meandering, poorly written article from USA Today that I'll probably get sick of riffing on halfway through there might be dangerous drugs lurking among the safe ones that promote thickness, solidity and tightness.

GNC, one of the world’s largest retailers of supposedly all-natural dietary supplements, has knowingly sold products spiked with two synthetic drugs, according to internal company records and a lawsuit filed Thursday by Oregon’s attorney general.

I'm not an expert at so-called criminality and fraud, but I'm pretty sure if you're going to "spike" something with synthetic drugs it's in your interest not to leave a massive paper trail of memos and TPS reports. What would these records even look like? "RE: Miracle Slim Diet Powder. Yeah, we're gonna add to, or 'spike' if you will, this product with dangerous drugs. The funny thing is, no one will ever find out and we'll make that big evil genius bank. So don't say nothin' and maybe destroy this memo, k?"

The suit accuses GNC of selling thousands of units of 22 workout and fat-burner supplement products that contained picamilon, a prescription drug in Russia that is used there to treat neurological conditions. 

In post-Soviet Russia diet pill is for makink the mind work better. Also, I'm not sure what the downside of this is, other than the involvement of the Russian boogeyman that has been bombing the terrorists we were planning on somehow turning into good little democratic consumers. Washboard stomach and a cure for my neurological conditions in one handy pill? How can I lose?

Internal company records show a key GNC official knew as far back as 2007 the ingredient wasn’t natural, the suit alleges, and therefore could not lawfully be included in dietary supplements, which can only contain natural ingredients. 

The only unnatural supplement act is one that's physically impossible to perform.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum also accuses the retail giant of selling other workout and weight-loss supplements that contained a synthetic amphetamine-like chemical known as BMPEA, Beta-methylphenethylamine and by several other chemical names.

This is an outrage. Bennies in the thinner potions. Hey, wake up, you're supposed to get angry! Come on, we need litigation!

Among other evidence of wrongdoing, the attorney general's office cites emails circulated two years ago among top GNC executives in the wake of a 2013 USA TODAY article about BMPEA in supplements.

Technical ineptitude with you electronic post office leading to a downfall. We call this the "Hillary maneuver."

GNC, which initially said it wouldn't comment on the pending litigation, issued a short statement Thursday afternoon

We convinced them to do it be texting "please respond."

Shares of the company plunged almost 15% to $34.23 in late afternoon trading.

Time to dump those Russian neurotoxin futures, the bottom just fell out.

According to the lawsuit, actions in May 2007 by a key GNC official — responsible for ensuring that supplement labels and scientific claims are accurate — show "GNC knew that picamilon is not a lawful dietary ingredient."

It also revealed that "Guaranteed to jack you up" is a totally scientific claim that proved misleading.

If your amateur ass takes it and dies we can use the "For Professional Athletes!" blurb to defeat lawsuits.

Documents reviewed by the official at that time showed “that picamilon was a synthetic drug created by Soviet investigators and was not a lawful dietary ingredient in the United States,” the suit alleges. 

We must keep this Red Menace from sapping our vital bodily six-packs.

Full Story.

Komment Korner  

my friend's sister makes $61 hourly on the laptop

Anthing can be considered a supplement like table salt or sugar.

Stop advertising your ignorance!

If they are guilty for anything it is selling cr@p that doesn't work.

Aaron Zehner is the author of "The Foolchild Invention" available in paperback and e-book format. Read free excerpts here and here.

News You Can't Use: Customers Free to Sue Department Stores for Fake Sales

Today's story is as American as apple pie, materialism, frivolous lawsuits, mathematical ignorance and baseball. It involves the classic dilemma of being duped by a so-called "sale" and then realizing when you get to the register that "20 percent" does not mean whatever it was you thought it did. Rather than simply at that point saying "You know what, no" and returning the items, as someone raised to believe in free markets and personal agency might do, you buy it anyway but later get a lawyer to file a waste-time lawsuit. A judge suffering from a Messiah complex then decides everyone should be doing this. After all, "stores" are the enemy.

May this New America live forever. 

Stores cannot be sued if they hide the fact that an item isn't actually discounted as much as they have advertised. The new ruling came in California where a judge overturned a class action suit against Kohl's department store. Now, if consumers find out that they paid more than the advertised discount price on something that they thought was on sale, they can sue the retailer for a sizable payout.

Maybe my reading comprehension isn't as A Class as I always brag it up as, but it seems these statements are contradictory. Having to do "fractions" is already tough enough, but now I'm faced with struggling through ill-constructed journalistic prose. Maybe it's time for a lawsuit against misleading opening paragraphs. A few million is all I ask.

What a bargain! Time to buy lots of luggage that I otherwise wouldn't!

The issue stems from the legal complaint made by Antonio S. Hinjonos, who argued that he would not have purchased as many items from Kohl's if he knew that there was not as significant of a discount as advertised.
 

I call that being tricked by a business. This is not the way to get a "come up." Popping tags? 

A year from now all of the above will be completely cryptic nonsense. 

According to the paper, he bought Samonsite luggage because he thought that it was 50 per cent off it's original $299.99 pricetag and he thought he was getting a 39 per cent markdown on polo shirts from the higher price of $36-per-shirt.

Because luggage is the sort of thing you buy more of when you think it's slightly cheaper, instead of buying it to fill an immediate need, like, say, a coming vacation. An ignorant scumbag "victim," an opportunistic lawyer and a judge drunk on power all converge to decide that cash-ins over arguably deceptive luggage labeling should clog up our courts and devastate local merchants. USA! USA! 

 Because it's so cheap I'm going to buy several dozen suitcases I don't really need.

Courthouse News Service cites the court filings where Mr Hinjonos said he 'would not have purchased (these) products at Kohl's in the absence of Kohl's misrepresentations.'

Well, I'm convinced. It makes sense that you wouldn't change your mind at the register, or keep your receipt and bring the items back. No, lawyers are a much cleaner and easier way to handle this non-problem.

'Here, Hinojos specifically and plausibly alleges that Kohl's falsely markets its products at reduced prices precisely because consumers such as himself reasonably regard price reductions as material information when making purchasing decisions,' the judge wrote.

Never has an obvious attempt to play the litigation lottery seemed so downright "plausible."

Originally the case was dismissed but that ruling was overturned by the 9th Circuit on Tuesday.

Originally sanity, common sense and the reasonable man standard won a rare victory, but they were defeated in a "do over."

Komment Korner

 
Kohls is notorious for doing this. I went in there a few times. They had dresses for girls at $49.99 and on sale for $29.99. You could buy the same dress for $29.99 elsewhere.

I hope this judge allows these people to also sue their public school teachers for turning them into economic idiots.

If I find out it wasn't the discount I thought it was, I either don't buy it or take it back if I did.

Better be careful. Once this principle gets started won't we be able to apply it to politicians too?

Aaron Zehner's first novel The Foolchild Invention is available in e-book format at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.