Tennis Player Sues Vitamin Distributor: Graydon Oliver, a tennis player on the ATP tour has sued Barry's Vitamins and Herbs, claiming that a sleep aid he purchased and used in 2003 contained a diuretic that caused him to fail a tour drug test. The sleep medicine, Relax-Aid, contained hydrochlorothiazide, and was detected in a routine random drug test. Diuretics are prohibited because they can be used to disguise the use of other banned, performance-enhancing substances.



The ATP found the failure to be inadvertent and thus handed down a more lenient sentence of a two month suspension and forfeiture of $5000 in prize money. But in the lawsuit, Oliver claims a number of other economic and non-economic losses, including damage to his reputation.



The law.com article has an interesting angle:

The case spotlights concerns about the lack of government regulation of dietary and herbal supplements, which were deregulated by Congress in 1994. Under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, as long as makers and marketers of such products do not claim their products treat a particular disease, they can legally make generalized claims of beneficial effects. The problem is that consumers often have no way of knowing the active ingredients and what the potential health risks are. The Relax-Aid label lists the names of various herbs but does not describe their chemistry.

I don't think this means that Oliver should win the lawsuit, but this is a scary proposition for anyone buying herbal supplements. On the one hand, people should take responsibility for only ingesting substances when they know the ingredients. But under this law, it seems like manufacturers can purposefully mislead consumers. Perhaps then, this is an area worthy of re-examination by the government, because the consequences could be much worse than a failed ATP drug test.

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