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February 17, 2009
Alert: Hawaii Aspartame Ban Bill Will Die If You Don't Call Hawaii Health Chair Senator David Ige Now!
By Stephen Fox
Is this 21st Century Consumer Protection, to see good bills killed by indifference, ignorance, corporate lobbyists, and foremost, a Senate Health Chairman's inaction, who chose not to schedule this bill for a hearing, while tens of Native Hawaiians are suffering from aspartame induced epilepsy and worsened diabetes, because they use and their doctors told them to drink Diet Cokes and chew sugarless gum? Is this a bad dream?
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Aspartame's impact on Hawaiian natives is absolutely devastating: seizures, convulsions, adult on-set diabetes in ten year old kids, early brain tumors and inexplicable (according to Western Medicine) cluster migraine headaches, in that Pacific Island Paradise....
[A Brief Note from Cosponsor Hawaii Senator Mike Gabbard:
Dear Mr. Fox: It's true that SB 576 will die next week if Senator Ige doesn't pass it out of committee. I'll do what I can on that one. Senator Mike Gabbard Phone: 808-586-6830]
Even if there is still time, Senator Ige's attitude and that of his staff, recalling from last year, are profoundly disturbing. Last year, eminent physicians from the Eastern 48 called and were asked by his staff "Why do you care about what happens in Hawaii?" One discussion with Senator Ige included someone else's remarks that "these aspartame opponents are just into internet junk science," and this resulted in no hearing on the Resolution.
This will again happen this year, without your personal intervention, your calling and emailing Senator Ige to ask that he schedule it in his Health Committee, and your asking him above all to support this legislation, both the Resolution and the Bill to Ban, which I assure you constitutes together some of the most advanced and far-reaching consumer protection legislation in the United States at this date.
Senator Ige, I am told, consumes Diet Cokes himself; perhaps he may see this entire effort in some personal manner having nothing to do with the impetus and momentum behind it coming from the Hawaiian victims of aspartame poisoning, of which there are hundreds of thousands with numerous unattributed or misdiagnosed symptoms.
These two important bills, SB576 and HB669, should not be subject to the interference nor the obstruction from one Senator nor the phalanx of corporate lobbyists already lined up against them from Coca Cola, Retail Grocers, Soft Drink Association, etc. These are the same kind of opponents who objected to consumer protection efforts against Thalidomide, Asbestos, Vioxx, Celebrex, you name it....I am sure you have heard them before, and will certainly hear them again.
Thousands more die or become afflicted will avoidable illnesses, while legislators listen to these corporate lobbyists. However, if you want to protect the Health of Hawaiians from a dangerous neurotoxic and carcinogenic poison, please move this legislation ahead by speaking at your earliest convenience with Senator Ige and Representative Yamane, asking them to schedule and to support both the Resolution and the Bill to Ban Aspartame.
Please let me know if you have any questions. I encourage you to send your testimonial letter supporting both the ban bill and the Resolution as Testimony, which will help force that there be a hearing, a short, to-the- point letter to Senator David Ige and to Rep Ryan Yamane, but also a copy thereof, sent to:
HLTTestimony@capitol.hawaii.gov Must Reference HB669
Testimony for the Senate may be emailed to Testimony@capitol.hawaii.gov or it may be faxed to 586-6659 (Neighbor Islands: 1-800-586-6659) Must Reference SB576
Respectfully,
Stephen Fox, Consumer and Political Editor New Mexico Sun News
Santa Fe, NM 505 983-2002
______________
Bill sponsor: J. Kalani English
Bill Number: SB576
Resolution Sponsor: Suzanne Chun Oakland Senate Resolution: SR13
______________________________________
David Y. Ige, Chairman
16th Senatorial District
Hawaii State Capitol, Room 215
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-6230; fax 808-586-6231
E-mail sendige@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Josh Green, M.D., Vice Chairman,cosponsor of both Bill To Ban and Resolution 3rd Senatorial District Hawaii State Capitol, Room 223
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-9385; fax 808-586-9391
e-mail sengreen@capitol.hawaii.gov
______________________________________________________
Ryan I. Yamane, Chairman of House Health Commitee 37th Representative District Hawaii State Capitol, Room 419
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-6150; fax 808-586-6151
E-mail repyamane@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Scott Y. Nishimoto, Vice Chairman, House Health Committee 21st Representative District Hawaii State Capitol, Room 441
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-8515; fax 808-586-8519
E-mail repnishimoto@Capitol.hawaii.gov
In due course, there will be some Attorney General of some state that wakes up from being asleep at the wheel on these consumer protection issues and initiates the first suits against nthe Aspartame corporations, much like the Tobacco Suits in the 1990's, and like the Tobacco Suits, many other States' Attorneys General will follow suit, and all will want to spend that money, of course....
God knows, I have tried to educate them; even my own AG, with his Ph.D. in Chemistry, dropped the ball almost entirely. There are a few other possibilities, but my main concern now is seeing just how reform minded the FDA under Obama is going to be, enough reform to take a poison found in 9000 food products off the market? We will see.
If any reader wants to take on this project of writing to your state Senator and state Representative to very specifically take on the project of bring a Resolution/Memorial to your state that simply asks the new FDA Commissioner to rescind the approval for aspartame, please reply to my personal email address. Thanks from Stephen Fox]
Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.
We added "2020" to the title.
I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.
I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.
Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).
For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....
My highest accomplishments thus far are
1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.
2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.
These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!
This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.
In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev