Dietary supplements are regulated as food, not drugs. Photo: Jeffrey Greenberg/UIG via Getty Images

The companies that make dietary supplements will lose one of their staunchest allies when Sen. Orrin Hatch leaves the Senate in 2019. Hatch helped write the law that set out a relatively lax regulatory regime for supplements — they’re regulated more like food than drugs, but they’re able to claim significant health benefits without proving that those benefits are real.

What they’re saying: “He often gets identified as a voice for the supplement industry but he comes from a state with a lot of manufacturing of supplements and with a huge population of people who use these products. He was a voice for the consumer. He’s a consumer himself,” Steve Mister, CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, told the industry trade publication WholeFoods Magazine.

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