Everything Is a Multivitamin
Updated at 11:24 p.m. ET on November 24, 2021.
In 1993, a SWAT team equipped with night-vision goggles and assault rifles surrounded Mel Gibson’s mansion under the cover of darkness. They burst into the home, eventually finding the movie star wearing a bathrobe in his kitchen. Gibson put his hands up and the agents cuffed him immediately, over protestations that he had done nothing wrong, and certainly nothing dangerous. His crime? The possession of vitamin C tablets. “You know, like in oranges,” Gibson reminded the agents—and the viewers.
This was a television commercial. In a dead-serious voice-over, the ad, which was backed by the dietary-supplement industry’s advocacy arm, claims that the federal government wants to classify your humble multivitamin capsules as drugs, a word loaded enough in the early ’90s to evoke crack instead of ibuprofen. The ad ends with a stark warning on a black screen: Viewers should contact the United States Senate to protect their freedoms. If they didn’t, their home could be raided next.
The campaign was a huge success, according to Catherine Price, the author of . At the time, the government was considering a bill to loosen the FDA’s regulatory reins on supplements, ensuring, among other things, that their makers would never have to prove their products’ safety or efficacy before marketing; by one estimate, the market was worth more than $43 billion in 2019. As people have looked for ways to fortify their immune system during the coronavirus pandemic, the industry .
