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announcing their decision in a press release! That's all-a press release! Based an this press release, agents of the FDA started investigating, arresting and prosecuting many health food store owners and distributors for selling an"unapproved new drug" (i.e., GHB). Some people wire promised lenient treatment if they would testify against others (the "big fish"). Some of these people went to prison, and are now branded as "convicted felons"- unable to vote, own firearms, or enjoy many of the other rights of free citizens. We will probably never know what process was followed in this decision. However, the FDA's disdain for following even their own rules and regulations had become routine operating procedure. At a recent court case at which I [WD) testified as an expert witness regarding the safety of GHB, it became evident that the government representatives in this case (prosecutors, FDA agents and FDA expert witnesses) either didn't know what they were talking about regarding GHB (which I have a hard time believing) or were deliberately lying (the only reasonable alternative). In previous, similar GHB cases, the prosecution (the Justice Department) attempted to portray GHB as a Schedule I controlled substance (a drug that has no medical uses, with a strong potential for addiction and abuse-like heroin). Federal prosecutors withheld knowledge from the defense of the existence of a number of Investigational New Drug Applications (INDs) for GHB on the rationale that they "contained no relevant information." Years later, after a number of people had spent considerable time in prison, higher courts ruled against the withholding of these INDs, overturned many of the GHB convictions, and forced the FDA to submit copies of all INDs to the courts for inclusion in still-pending trials, or re-trial of overturned cases. The GHB INDs were telling. Instead of corroborating the FDA's views and the testimony of government expert witnesses, the INDs flatly contradicted them. GHB was repeatedly described, in IND after IND, as a safe, non-toxic, non-addictive substance, with an extremely wide margin of safety. With the INDs in evidence, the prosecution is having a hard time convincing either judge or jury of the dangers of GHB. With the growing realization that GHB was never properly classified as a drug, and that it now fits the Federal legal def?nition of a food supplement, the judicial system is recognizing that it bas been "had" by the FDA. One of the FDA's expert witnesses who recently testified as to the dangers of GHB was forced to admit that she had never seen a single patient who had taken GHB. As the FDA's GHB convictions are unraveling at the seams-with at least one US government attorney in jeopardy of being disbarred because of prosecutorial misconduct in these GHB cases-the FDA has adopted several, new, "end-run" tactics. They have shifted emphasis in the anti-GIiB crusade from the courts to the media. FDA, DEA and police agents are telling reporters that GHB is a dangerous, lethal and addictive drug; that it is an illegal "designer" drug; and that it is a "date rape" drug. Such "expert" opinions have propagated a plethora of hysterical articles in the popular (and even medical) press to