Consumer group praises re-introduction of Arbitration Fairness Act – National Consumers League

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May 9, 2013

Contact: Ben Klein, NCL Communications, benk@nclnet.org, (202) 835-3323

Washington, DC—The National Consumers League (NCL), America’s pioneering consumer and worker advocacy group, applauds Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) for reintroducing the Arbitration Fairness Act, H.R. 1844. Forced arbitration is an increasingly common practice that strips American consumers and employees of their right to a fair trial, should they be harmed from a product or while at work.

“Too many consumers and employees unknowingly sign contracts that contain forced arbitration clauses buried deep in fine print,” said Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director. “These hidden agreements effectively protect big companies from being sued by shutting off consumers’ and workers’ access to the courthouse.”

In January of 2013, NCL joined with other consumer groups to issue a manifesto urging the Obama Administration and Congress to re-examine consumer protection laws. The groups asked that consumers be released from mandatory binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts that do not allow for alternative forms of dispute resolution or judicial review. 

Consumers who sign arbitration clauses are prevented from being able to sue a company in court, but rather are directed to a private arbitration firm that is often chosen and paid for by the business. Forced arbitration not only takes away consumers’ right to a trial, but it also bars them from class-action suits, a vital tool for consumers and workers to band together and seek justice.

Defending consumers’ access to the courts has been a long-time goal of the League. In 2008, NCL, along with six other consumer and public interest groups, called on the Obama Administration and Congress to enact legislation that would restore an unbiased and open justice system that remedies harms and holds wrongdoers accountable. In 2011, NCL praised the introduction of the Arbitration Fairness Act (S. 987 and H.R. 1873), which would eliminate forced arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, and civil rights cases, and which would effectively override the Supreme Court’s decision in AT&T v. Concepcion.

“Having a dispute settled by an arbitration firm is like suing someone in a court when you know the judge has been paid off by the defendant,” said Greenberg. “The Arbitration Fairness Act would restore American’s right to a fair trial and deprive big companies of their get-out-of-jail-free-card and we urge the Senate to vote to pass quickly.”

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

Telecom advocacy at top of agenda – National Consumers League

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NCL staff has been busy at the Federal Communications Commission lately. From comments on inmate calling rates, to the new FCC chair and activity on wireless cramming, telecom and technology issues remain an area of focus for the League.

 

Inmate calling rates

According to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2011 there were nearly 1.6 million Americans incarcerated in federal or state correctional facilities. For many of these prisoners, a phone call to loved ones is an important way to stay in touch during a difficult time. Regular contact with loved ones is an important contributing factor to reducing recidivism rates as well. 

Unfortunately, thanks to exclusive agreements between correctional facilities and inmate calling service (ICS) providers, the cost of this regular contact can be prohibitive for many families, particular those on limited incomes. Inmate communications are typically limited to collect calling from prison payphones that often carry exorbitant rates, a portion of which is paid to the correction facility.

In April, NCL joined a coalition of prisoner advocacy, civil rights, public interest and business groups in calling on the FCC to cap these rates. “Having a loved one incarcerated already places severe strain on families,” said NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg. “Being hit with the double whammy of extremely high calling rates to communicate with that loved one only exacerbates that strain. We applaud the FCC for considering this important issue and urge the Commission to institute common-sense rate caps that will allow inmates and their families to affordably stay in touch.”

Calling for public interest advocate for next FCC Chair

On March 22, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that he would be stepping down as chair. FCC Chair that brings extensive public interest expertise to the position. “Any consumer who has opened their mobile phone or cable bill in recent years understands the importance of having an FCC chair that is on their side,” said NCL’s Sally Greenberg in a blog posting about the issue. “While the Obama Administration will undoubtedly consider a number of worthy candidates, we believe that the next FCC chair should have significant experience in public interest advocacy.”

Wireless cramming heating up this spring

In 2012, NCL led a coalition of public interest groups in urging the FCC to protect consumers from cramming fraud. “Cramming,” the placement of unauthorized charges on phone bills, has long been a pernicious scam affecting millions of consumers. Thanks in part to NCL’s advocacy the biggest phone companies in the country announced that they would voluntarily cease providing billing to so-called “enhanced” services on landline phone bills – a change that has had a significant impact on reducing fraud rates.

Unfortunately, it looks like the scam artists may simply be shifting their cons to wireless bill. NCL is not sitting idly by. In May, NCL Vice President John Breyault presented at a Federal Trade Commission roundtable on the issue. We expect that this issue will continue to percolate in Washington in Congress, at the FCC and the FTC. NCL will continue to call for stronger consumer protections in this area so that the massive fraud that affected landline telephone bills gets nipped in the bud before it gets out of control on wireless bills.

Protecting workers, customer service in T-Mobile/MetroPCS merger

As the FCC considered the merger of wireless companies T-Mobile and MetroPCS, NCL joined with a coalition of labor and civil rights groups in calling for the FCC to consider the merger’s impact on jobs. In comments filed at the FCC in December, the groups called for merger conditions that would protect jobs at the combined company and ensure that customer service didn’t suffer as a result of the deal. NCL, along with the other coalition members stated that we were “deeply concerned that the evidence in the record and the Applicants’ practice of sending work offshore will result in significant post-merger job loss and harm to the quality of service provided to customers as a result of staffing cuts.”

LifeSmarts 2013: What a competition! – National Consumers League

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After four exciting days of individual assessments, group activities, and team buzzer matches, the Paxon School for Advanced Studies from Jacksonville, Florida outlasted 38 other teams from around the country to claim the title of LifeSmarts champion in the annual national competition. This year’s championship in Atlanta was the biggest competition ever, featuring teams from 35 states, the District of Columbia, and two student organizations, FCCLA and FBLA.

LifeSmarts is a national competition that tests teens around the country on their consumer knowledge. There are five areas of focus including: personal finance, health and safety, consumer rights and responsibilities, the environment, and technology.  LifeSmarts not only gives high school students a chance to demonstrate their consumer acumen, but also provides an opportunity to learn about issues that will prove useful in the real-world. As LifeSmarts participants progress through high school, they will be armed with the practical knowledge needed later in life to protect themselves and their finances.

This year’s competition featured a new collaboration with Underwriter’s Laboratories (UL) called the Safety Smart! Ambassador Program. The Safety Smart! program gives LifeSmarts students the opportunity to reach out to younger students in the community and teach them lessons about health and safety.  These lessons feature a curriculum that teaches young children the benefits of going green and being healthy and fit. Older students have an opportunity to reach out to the elementary school students and gain important life skills such as leadership, public speaking, and the importance of advocacy in the community.

Rhode Island’s entrant, Barrington High School, finished the competition in second place. Dallas High School from Pennsylvania and the Coffee County 4-H school from Tennessee finished tied for third. All participants at the national competition, over 200 students, took an individual assessment in a category of their choice and winners in each received special recognition. The winners were: personal finance, Steven Cotter (FL); health and safety, Isaac Mades (WI); consumer rights and responsibilities, Gates Palissery (PA); the environment, Jack Caljouw (MA); and technology, Ryan Jerue (RI).

This year also marked our first ever Twitter contest. The Twitter competition served as a tool to increase buzz around the national competition and many students, coaches, parents, coordinators, and spectators participated. Three winners were selected for demonstrating both quality and quantity in what was tweeted during competition. The winners were: Alicia Heis (IN), Kennnedy Langton (FBLA), and Tshala Pajibo (DC).

NCL is very excited to announce that next year’s 20th annual national competition will be held in Orlando, Florida. Teams representing every corner of the country from Hawaii to Washington to Maine participated in this year’s event and we believe our ultimate goal of inviting a team to our national competition from all 50 states is within reach.  Educators, financial institutions, attorneys general, governmental organizations, and others see the benefits of the LifeSmarts program and continue to invest in educating the next wave of consumers. Knowledge is power, and consumer knowledge gives students the power to avoid financial pain and make healthy, intelligent life decisions. To find out more about the LifeSmarts competition please see our Web site. To see the LifeSmarts students in action, check out our photo album from this year’s competition.

Wireless cramming: The tip of a very large iceberg – National Consumers League

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By John Breyault, Vice President of Public Policy, Telecommunications and Fraud

Wireless cramming is at the top of the Federal Trade Commission’s agenda today, as government officials, advocates and industry representatives gather to discuss the issue and potential solutions at the FTC’s Mobile Cramming Roundtable. I am honored to present at the event, along with a number of other experts on the topic. For those loyal readers unable to watch the live webcast, I can sum up my comments thusly: Wireless cramming is a big problem and is only going to get worse without action by regulators to protect consumers.

Cramming fraud has been around for decades. Beginning in the late 1990s, enterprising scam artists learned that they could get small charges placed on consumers’ landline phone bills. With doctored “authentications” and poor policing by the phone companies and billing aggregators, scammers made millions of dollars. As consumers increasingly adopted wireless phones, the scam artists moved to those bills. Wireless cramming is proving to be just a lucrative for the fraudsters. In its first enforcement action against alleged wireless cramming outfit Wise Media, the FTC stated that the company made millions of dollars in less than two years of operation.

Wise Media is likely just the tip of a very large iceberg. While there is precious little data about the scope of the wireless third-party billing market generally and the cost of wireless cramming on consumers, we can make some educated estimates based on the data that is available.

Earlier this year, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) published its Cramming Report, which reported that in 2011, wireless carriers in California billed $171 million for third-party products and services. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s most recent Wireless Competition Report, there were an estimated 34,892,000 wireless subscribers in California and 298,293,000 wireless subscribers nationally in 2011. Extrapolating the California data to a national scale therefore yields an estimated $1.46 billion in third-party charges were assessed on consumer bills nationally in 2011. According to recent reports from the Illinois Citizens Utility Board and the Vermont Attorney General, between 44 percent and more than 50 percent of charges on consumers’ wireless bills are fraudulent. This means that we are potentially looking at $643 million to more than $730 million in wireless cramming losses annually.

How did things get this bad? First of all, wireless cramming is practically the perfect scam for its perpetrators. Unlike muggings, carjacking or other types of crime, cramming victims are often unaware that they have been harmed. This is because the scammers typically only charge small amounts per month on consumers’ wireless bills – usually less than $10 per month.  Lost in the maze of fees on consumers’ bills and often deceptively labeled, these charges are easy to miss, even by those few consumers who check their wireless bills regularly. With the ease of paperless bills and auto bill pay, it is even easier for consumers to overlook these charges.

Second, the structure of the wireless billing ecosystem is inherently insecure. There are typically three main actors in this ecosystem: the third-party service provider who provides a service (say, horoscopes by text message), a billing aggregator who contracts with dozens or hundreds of third-party service providers and bills the wireless carrier on their behalf and the wireless carrier who bill the consumer and collect payment (typically 1/3 to ½ of the total charge). Given this lucrative line of business, there is an incentive to overlook instances of cramming at all levels of the billing ecosystem. Even worse, phone bills aren’t protected from fraud the way that credit or debit cards are. Therefore, consumers are essentially at the mercy of their carriers to refund the fraudulent charges when the end-user detects the scam.

When consumer groups and government agencies examined the issue of landline cramming in 2011 and 2012, the solution seemed self-evident to many – simply prohibit third-party billing that was unrelated to the underlying telephone service. Given that the vast majority of third-party billed charges on landline phones were fraudulent, this was an easy call. The solution is more complex when it comes to wireless bills.  By all accounts, legitimate commerce is conducted via wireless third-party billing. For example, relief agencies raised more than $43 million via text-to-donate programs after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Simply prohibiting wireless third-party billing would clearly be regulatory overreach.

However, there are steps that can be taken to address cramming fraud. For example, cramming fraud operators often set up shell companies so that they can continue to operate even when consumer complaints get their operation shut down by wireless carriers or billing aggregators. If billing aggregators were to require all third-party service providers to post a significant bond before they can start billing consumers, it could make it prohibitively expensive for scammers to set up shell companies.

Another solution would be to prohibit the use of “negative options” in confirmatory text messages. Industry guidelines require the use of a “double opt-in” before a third-party service provider can begin billing. This is most often provided in the form of a reply to a confirmation text message (i.e., “are you SURE you want this? Text ‘YES’ to confirm”) Unfortunately, cramming fraud operators like Wise Media often use negative options – assuming that most recipients would simply ignore the confirmation text message and thus agree to be billed.

Third, the lack of public data on wireless cramming is a significant impediment to effective consumer protection. Wireless carriers in California are currently required to report cramming complaints to the California Public Utilities Commission, which makes this data public. Wireless carriers should be required to report all cramming complaints to the FCC so that regulators have an accurate picture of the scope of the problem.

These are just a few common-sense reforms that would do much to better protect consumers from fraud on their wireless bills. We look forward to working with the FTC, FCC and all parties in the wireless billing ecosystem to address this important issue.

Partnering for a healthy America — How to improve medication adherence – National Consumers League

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92_ayannaBy Ayanna Johnson, Health Policy Associate

NCL was proud to be a part of a new initiative Prescriptions for a Healthy America: A Partnership to Advance Medication Adherence that launched on May 2. This initiative is a partnership of patients, health care providers, pharmacy organizations, consumers, and health care industry leaders that are working together to advance policy solutions to improve patient health and reduce health care costs through improving rates of adherence.

NCL has been a leader in the medication adherence arena with its public education campaign Script Your Future. Launched in 2011, Script Your Future works to raise awareness among consumers, their family caregiver and health care professionals about the importance of taking medications as directed. Non-adherence costs the health care industry an estimated $290 billion a year and 125,000 people lose their lives annually from complications related to non-adherence. The stakes are high when it comes to encouraging patients to take their medication as directed.

A panel discussion, , announcing the launch of this new initiative included various players, including the National Consumers League, interested in improving rates of adherence.  Often patients have rational reasons for not adhering to their medicines; barriers such as cost, side effects and confusion about the purpose of medication all contribute to non-adherence. Sally Greenberg, Executive Director of National Consumers League, stressed that improving the communication between patients and their health care providers—communicating the consequences of poor adherence and impact of medication—increases the likelihood of better adherence.

Anita Allemand, Vice President of Product Innovation and Management for CVS Caremark noted that patients could save $8,000 a year with improved adherence. She added that the most critical element of improving adherence is face-to-face interactions between healthcare professionals and patients.

Dr. Rebecca Jaffe a board member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and family doctor said that health care professionals must engage their patients. “It is important that heath care professionals talk with them, not at them,” she said. Patients are often hesitant or unwilling to ask their doctors or pharmacists the essential questions that would enable increased adherence. Opening up this new line of communication and ensuring that patients feel comfortable asking questions and expressing worries about potential side effects, or how different drugs might affect each other, or what a patient can expect from a particular prescription will help people understand the need to adhere.

This new initiative is an exciting opportunity to bring together different voices from all parties concerned with the issue of non-adherence to work towards practical policy solutions. For more information about the initiative please visit the newly launched Web site.

For more information on the Script Your Future campaign visit www.scriptyourfuture.org.

Arrested in St. Louis fighting for labor rights – National Consumers League

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Thousands gathered in St. Louis to support mine worker’s benefits
 

By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

On Monday, the National Consumers League joined two legendary labor leaders – Cecil Roberts, President of the United Mine Workers of America, and Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America – at a rally and protest outside Peabody Energy headquarters in St. Louis. We made history by rallying with 6,000+ members of the UMWA, CWA, UNITE HERE, SEIU, and Jobs for Justice and then marched to the federal courthouse several blocks away, where a group of us were arrested for “impeding traffic” by sitting down in the street. Why were we there? Because the Patriot Coal company, which was created by Peabody Energy, is filing for bankruptcy, which will leave 22,500 coal miners and their families without health care and retirement benefits. Peabody Energy continues to rake in massive profits despite Patriot Coal filing for bankruptcy.

At this rally were some true legends: Van Jones, an environmental advocate and former Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation at the White House, spoke about environmentalists needing to care about workers facing dire loss of health care and retirement income as much as spotted owls or crickets. The NAACP’s director in Missouri, Adolthus Pruitt, read aloud sections of the Peabody annual report detailing the burgeoning profits the company was earning year after year. And of course, the two distinguished labor leaders, Roberts and Cohen.

If ever there was a just cause, this is it: ensuring that 22,500 miners who, for decades, performed dangerous labor hundreds of feet below ground, and who bargained for health care and retirement benefits for their families and gave up wages and other benefits in the process, get the benefits and income they are due. The National Consumers League proudly stands with these workers and their families, and that is why I and Van Jones and Larry Cohen and so many others spoke out, marched, and got arrested in St. Louis.

Lack of worker safety highlighted by April disasters – National Consumers League

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By Michell K. McIntyre, Director of NCL’s Special Project on Wage Theft

April was not a good month for worker safety. Over a two-week span, four separate events – an explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas, a fire at an Exxon refinery in Texas, a building collapse in Bangladesh, and the death of a poultry plant inspector in New York– highlight the human cost of big business. It is estimated that every day in America, 13 workers go to their job and never come home.

This last Sunday, April 28, was Workers Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have suffered and died on the job from workplace injuries and diseases. Each death has left friends and family behind to pick up the pieces and move on with a new reality. These are lives that could have been saved. Lives that, if the necessary precautions had been made and basic safety standards implemented, could have been prevented.

Big business has consistently put its interests ahead of the interests of its employees. Either through lobbying to weaken regulations and government oversight, or simply gross negligence, industry has gambled with people’s lives. Unfortunately, it is the workers who pay when this gamble fails. Government is continuously lobbied by industry to either weaken existing regulations or prevent new proposed regulations from becoming law. Industry has lobbied to skewer government agency budgets to prevent proper funding to agencies tasked with inspecting duties.

American companies have a responsibility to protect their employees.  Too often, big companies are deemed innocent of any wrongdoing in cases of preventable work-related injury. We must put pressure on these companies to raise safety standards throughout their supply chain to protect workers both at home and abroad. Stay tuned to nclnet.org for an in-depth piece on workplace disasters later this week.

Greenberg remarks at United Mine Workers of America rally in St. Louis – National Consumers League

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April 29, 2013

My name is Sally Greenberg, and I am the Executive Director of the National Consumers League.

NCL is a consumer and worker advocacy organization that has been fighting for fair labor standards since 1899! Our founder, Florence Kelley, wrote and implemented the country’s first minimum wage laws, maximum hours laws and her pioneering work was instrumental in getting our nation’s children out of factories and mines. NCL’s early leadership advocated for national health insurance and social security benefits for retirees.

Today, we stand with the United Mine Workers of America to show our support and solidarity for the 22,500 people affected by this egregious and outrageous example of corporate greed. No one has done more to build this nation or worked harder by the sweat of their brow or given more lives than our nation’s coal miners! The loyalty and camaraderie demonstrated here today is remarkable and uplifting! We are HONORED to be among you today!

NCL represents both workers AND consumers. Consumers have an inherent sense of fairness, especially about hard won bargained for healthcare and retirement benefits. Together we will fight to ensure that this abuse of workers and abuse of power will not be a roadmap for any other company to follow!

The industry made promises to thousands of workers. NCL stands with those women and men and every working family to demand our voices are heard and those promises are kept!! This issue that not only affects coal miners but every single worker in this country. Fairness at Patriot represents Fairness for all!

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

The human costs of big business: preventable workplace disasters – National Consumers League

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What do the explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, the fire at Exxon’s Beaumont, Texas refinery, the building collapse in Bangladesh, and injuries at American poultry processing plants have in common? They are all examples of employees going to work and getting injured or dying on the job. Everyday in America, 13 workers go to their job and never come home.

April 28 was Workers Memorial Day, a day set aside to honor the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have suffered and died on the job from workplace injuries and diseases. Each death has left friends and family behind who have to pick up the pieces and move on with a new reality.

In many cases, the injuries and lives lost could have been prevented. Under the slogan “Job-killing regulations!” industry has fought for fewer regulations and less government oversight. Industry argues that more rules to follow and guidelines to meet result in lower productivity and fewer jobs. They have successfully lobbied government, on all levels, to create “toothless” regulations. However, reality reveals the true costs of deregulation – worker injuries, deaths, and in some cases—the devastation of entire communities.

The West Fertilizer Company plant, where the Texas explosion occurred on April 18, 2013, had not seen a U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspector in 28 years. The West Fertilizer Company plant had not been placed on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) list of 4,000 facilities with high-risk chemicals. After 9/11, Congress passed a law that requires plants that use or store explosives or high-risk chemicals to file reports with DHS in order to increase security at those facilities. The requirement includes any plant with more than 400 pounds of ammonium nitrate, but, according to a DHS official, the West Fertilizer Company had 1,350 times the required amount and failed to file the report. The plant simply fell through the cracks of regulatory oversight.

Along with agriculture, mining, and construction, the energy industry has one of the highest death and injury rates in the United States. The fire at Exxon’s Beaumont refinery on April 17, 2013, resulted in 12 contract workers being injured on the job. According to an April 22 National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH) press conference, temporary and contract workers are more likely than full-time employees to be injured or die on the job due to insufficient training. In many cases, prior to working in dangerous jobs, temporary and contract workers receive only minimal training. Since the company that employ the temporary workers is not always the same entity that is paying them, the company is incentivized to assume less responsibility by skirting laws such as providing workers compensation and paying taxes. Many of these workers don’t know whom to turn to in the event of injury—the company where they worked or the entity that hired them—to receive workers compensation and report injuries.

The collapse of the 8-story factory building in Bangladesh on April 24, 2013, which killed more than 377 people, has, once again, placed the spotlight on the poor and unsafe working conditions of those who create products for American consumers. International businesses, many based in the United States, used this factory, as well as the Tazreen Fashions factory where a devastating fire killed at least 112 workers this past November, to manufacture many of their garments. Western businesses need to wake up and realize the human cost of the race to the lowest prices.

Clothing brands and retailers like Walmart, H&M, Sears, and the Gap, which buy billions of dollars of clothes from Bangladesh, need to demand and pay for adequate safeguards at the factories that fill their orders. These companies have the power to demand better working conditions from these factories and improve the health and safety of millions of workers. International factory workers, especially those in China and Bangladesh – the two leading garment-producing nations – lack collective bargaining agreements and unions. Historically, unions have ushered in safer working conditions. In the case of the building collapse, strong unions could have prevented the loss of many lives by supporting workers who had noticed cracks in the structure but were forced back to work when factory owners threatened to dock their pay and fire them.

After the eye-opening Washington Post article on poultry processing plants, profiling a plant inspector who died after his lungs bled out, American consumers are faced with tough questions about how we produce our food. The poultry processing industry, along with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are poised to change the way they process and inspect our chickens and turkeys but at what costs? The proposed rule increases the use of chemical baths and sprays, including chlorine and peracetic acid (chemicals that have been labeled toxic by their manufacturing plants), transfers inspection duties from federal employees to plant employees, and increases the speed of inspection – from four USDA inspectors inspecting 140 birds per minute to one USDA inspector inspecting 175 birds per minute – 3 birds per second.

The proposed rule has been heralded by industry and some in government as a way to save the government money by staffing plants with fewer USDA inspectors, while also allowing the poultry industry to increase profits by processing more birds. While it seems to be a win-win for the government and industry, what about the workers and American consumers? So far, there has not been a comprehensive USDA study about the possible side effects created from an increased reliance on chemicals. Besides the death of Jose Navarro, the inspector whose lungs bled out, other poultry plant employees have reported injuries, due to the increased use of toxic chemicals, ranging from respiratory system irritation (including coughing up blood) to rashes on their arms and legs and an epidemic of pain from musculoskeletal disorders (including carpal tunnel) due to the increase in line speed.

In these four examples – all of which occurred in a two-week span – big business has put its interests ahead of the interests of its employees. Either through lobbying to weaken regulations and government oversight, or simply gross negligence, industry has gambled with people’s lives. Unfortunately, it is the workers who pay when this gamble fails. Government is continuously lobbied by industry to either weaken existing regulations or prevent new proposed regulations from becoming law. Industry has lobbied to skewer government agency budgets to prevent proper funding to agencies tasked with inspecting duties. For example, OSHA has about 2,200 inspectors for 130,000,000 workers and due to budgetary restrictions cannot hire and train more inspectors. It’s time to demand more from big business and government.

FDA issues advisory on foreign counterfeit Botox – National Consumers League

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The FDA has issued an advisory, warning consumers and healthcare professionals about counterfeit Botox that has entered the marketplace.  The outer carton of these counterfeit products appears to be the FDA approved version of Botox, but inside there is a foreign version of Botox, not approved by the FDA. These counterfeits are being sold through “blast faxes” in which a foreign company solicits sales from medical practices at very low prices.

There is no indication that the FDA approved version of Botox is unsafe, but these foreign counterfeit versions are unfamiliar and untested. Medical practices should not purchase products that are unsolicited. Signs that the Botox is counterfeit include the incorrect active ingredient listed on the outer carton, or expiration dates on the outer carton that do not match the accompanying vial enclosed within.

Consumers must be aware that fraudulent Botox is being widely distributed, and should take extra precaution before beginning Botox treatment. If you see any suspicious looking products please report these cases of fraud immediately to Fraud.org, the FDA, or call the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations at 1-800-551-3989 to prevent other consumers from falling victim to the same traps.