07 February 2008

Dear Chairman Dr. Green, Vice Chairman Mizuno, and members of the Hawaiian House Health Committee:

As a fellow legislator and member of the New Mexico State Senate, I write to you now to say that I support your efforts to ban aspartame. I am concerned that there is incontrovertible medical evidence that ingesting aspartame, which includes methanol and formaldehyde, is doing entirely avoidable, terrible, medical damage, particularly in causing neurodegenerative illnesses. An ordinary precautionary principle would strongly indicate that it should be off the market until proven completely safe, and not just by studies paid for by industry supporters.

Unfortunately, the FDA has shown no interest in rescinding its approval thus far. Hawaii, though, is in a strong position to limit or entirely prevent it from being imported in products coming from the U.S. mainland and foreign countries. Please do not give in to the corporate lobbyists theories of federal pre-emption; they were advanced by corporations in New Mexicos legislature in 2006 and in 2007 and succeeded in killing the bills which I carried.

I hope you will give your bill a do pass in your Health Committee. This will also send a very strong message to the FDA Commissioner that corporate theories and corporate misrepresentations are not going to prevail in Honolulu, even if they have temporarily succeeded in Santa Fe!

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino
New Mexico