Bellion Spirits LLC and Chigurupati Technologies Private LTD launched a broad challenge to Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau’s ban on health claims in alcohol advertising, and TTB’s practice of deferring to the Food & Drug Administration’s standards for evaluating dietary supplements
The case arises because TTB refused to approve two claims: “NTX helps protect DNA from alcohol-induced damage” and (2) “NTX reduces alcohol-induced DNA damage.”
Both claims are truthful, the plaintiffs say, and supported by credible scientific evidence.
By censoring in toto the health-related statements in controversy, the plaintiffs claim TTB violates the First Amendment and denies consumers access in the market, including at the point of sale, to factual information concerning the potential of NTX to reduce the risk of alcohol-induced DNA damage. By censoring Plaintiffs’ speech, TTB casts a pall of censorship over the alcohol market, keeping from it innovations designed to reduce the deleterious effects of alcohol on the body.
There’s more: TTB has for years deferred to FDA to review health-related claims. But TTB doesn’t have the statutory authority to do this, the plaintiffs claim. And because TTB hasn’t adopted “workable regulatory procedures and criteria for the evaluation of health-relation statements, it’s engaged in blanket suppression of truthful health claims on the label, in the labeling, and in the advertising of alcohol,” the plaintiffs say.
Bellion says it provided TTB a “wealth of peer-reviewed literature, animal studies, human clinical test data, and product-specific testing, show that NTX® and its major components reduce DNA damage from DNA single and double strand breaks induced by alcohol and other ROS generating systems in the liver.”
The plaintiffs claim TTB’s policy violates the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and improperly relies on FDA to evaluate claims.