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The Natural Products Expo West trade show was held last weekend in Anaheim, California. I spent the show cruising the floor, interviewing vendors, sampling products and digging up new information to pass along to NaturalNews readers. (By the way, thanks to all the people who said hi to me at the show! It was nice to meet some NaturalNews readers in person.)
If you read the mainstream media, everybody's happy, happy, happy about the show and the industry as a whole, but if you go there yourself and ask questions as an independent, skeptical journalist, you get the rest of the story. And that's what I'll share with you here: A behind-the-scenes look at Expo West. Here's what you'll never read in the mainstream media.
To get started, however, I do have to compliment the New Hope staff and show organizers. Even with some of the grumbling from vendors I'm about to reveal here, the show was, in my opinion, a huge success. It really is a must-see event for anyone in the industry, and the crowds were even thicker this year, meaning there's an increase in public interest in natural products. So kudos to the New Hope folks who put this together. It's no small feat to make the show work.
And now for the rest of the story...
Ahh, the fragrant smell of... cigarettes?You would think that a hall full of 45,000 people buying and selling natural health products wouldn't smell like an ash try right outside the front door, but you'd be wrong. The predominant smell of the show wasn't essential oils, or rosemary, or fragrance, but rather cigarette smoke. You couldn't escape it.
Smokers surrounded every building with an impenetrable wall of airborne carcinogens. Just walking out of the Hilton hotel became an exercise in respiratory survival, and entering the Expo West show itself required scrambling through a wall of smokers stationed just outside the main entrance doors. Whether you were trying to eat lunch under the sun, catch a taxi or return to your hotel, you were always fighting the cigarette smoke. It even wafted indoors any time someone opened a door to enter or leave the show building.
I inhaled so much smoke at Expo West that I'm pretty sure visiting that trade show was the single most hazardous health experience I've had since last year's show. Sorta funny for a "health" show, huh? But it also just goes to show you how many people are in the industry for the profit, not the health. Some folks will sell you cancer remedies in between puffs on a cigarette.
The solution to all this is simple. Ban smoking on all the sidewalks and walkways, create a designated smoking room in the basement, and make people go there to light up. Now, I'm a big believer in personal freedom, and I don't give a hoot if people go suck on burnt tobacco in their own homes or cars, but when THEIR smoke gets in the way of MY lungs, then I'm going to say something about it. Next year, I might bring a gas mask and have a picture taken in front of the Expo West logo, surrounded by smokers. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words.
FDA censorship in full swing at Expo WestMany vendors were complaining to me about the FDA censorship at the show. The New Hope group that organized the show actually invites an "FDA Enforcement Officer" to join the show, and they run around the show sampling brochures and making sure nobody makes any "unproven claims" about supplements, herbs, vitamins or even colloidal silver.
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Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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