FDA Action: Piracetam
The FDA is taking action against the sale of piracetam on the U.S. dietary supplement market, according to SmartPowders owner Mike McCandless. A recent post on the Anabolic Minds forum warns of an industry wide crackdown on the sale of products containing this ingredient:
“Got served a letter today. FDA is making a massive push against piracetam. Their stance is that it is a drug and it can’t be sold. They also mentioned some other random products made by GET, Iforce, Fizogen, AMS. They said they’re going after everyone selling Piracetam…”
Source: http://anabolicminds.com/forum/supplements/159785-fda-says-piracetam-post2556308.html
Piracetam is a nootropic (memory/cognitive enhancing) substance derived from gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). It is known to help improve the fluidity of certain cell membranes, and protect them against hypoxia (low oxygen conditions). Piracetam is sold as a drug in some foreign markets, but was not previously registered as such in the U.S. While technically this may be a proper definition according the DSHEA regulations (some dispute this classification), its close structure to a basic endogenous chemical and long track record of efficacy and safety in other markets left it in a sort of FDA limbo for a long time. Perhaps the fact that it was traditionally sold on a small scale, mostly through Internet bulk powder suppliers, had helped it stay low on the FDA radar. As this post mentions, perhaps the emergence of many commercial dietary supplements featuring this ingredient has now prompted the FDA to finally take a stance. Given this report, we can expect most piracetam products will now be pulled form distribution.
Completely untrue: the FDA is only targeting Mike M because he has made false claims about piracetam. Check out this link to the pdf of the letter he received from the FDA, posted by himself: http://www.smartpowders.com/v/vspfiles/assets/files/FDA-piracetam.pdf. It clearly states that they are going after him, not piracetam.
Apparently he’s using this to move a lot of piracetam quickly “before the FDA takes it off the shelves”. Very manipulative scare tactic marketing on his part – shame on him. I’m not buying from him anymore.
There’s a new pre-mix on the market, by the way: ivyleaguelabs.com is premixing piracetam with picamilon, choline, hydergine, vinpocetine and a bunch of B vitamins. A friend told me about them, and while they are mainly selling to college students for studying, I’m going to try some for myself (just passing 40 this year…). It seems like it should be a pretty interesting combo of cognitive enhancers.
makes me sick. big pharma at work. safe and effective. i use this to help my mom curve the risk of dementia and other mental illnesses that plague our genealogy. let me guess… we’ll have to buy this with a prescription now… for much more than we used to.
Too bad. I’ve used it and it definitely works. I suspect that because it works so well, “BIG PHARMA” wants to be in charge of ‘distribution’.
What can we do to stop these goosestepping morons
Perhaps if they used some of the products they work so hard to ban, they just might have an epiphany and stop this nonsense.
When the FDA or DEA get involved I usually smell money.