Texas, Virginia, and New Hampshire have become the latest of 11 states to see legislative bills that seek to ban the sale of dietary supplements for muscle building or weight loss to minors.

STRIPED, the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been a leading advocate of these measures to reduce minors’ access to weight loss and muscle-building products, due to perceived connections between the use of these products and eating disorders.

New York became the first state to see the passage and enactment of this type of ban into law, after U.S. District Court Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. denied the Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN)’s request for a preliminary injunction in its lawsuit. While the injunction request was denied, CRN’s case is still being litigated, and the next court date is set for Jan. 24.

The dietary supplements industry has largely opposed this legislation, with many observers claiming that the vague language consistent across all of the bills makes it impossible to determine which products would be impacted, making compliance difficult. Additionally, the bills are chiefly concerned with banning a product based on how it might be marketed, rather than concentrating on safety or correlation with disordered eating.

Other states where bills banning sales of supplements for weight loss and muscle building to minors include California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Texas Representative Suleman Lalani, MD (D) and Senator Molly Cook (D), as well as Virginia Delegate Alicia Gregg introduced bills seeking to prohibit the sale and provision to minors of “certain over-the-counter weight loss drugs and dietary supplements,” in which violators would face an initial civil penalty of $500, and subsequent $2,500 penalties for further violations within three years.

All three of these bills are highly consistent with STRIPED’s model legislation. They each identify the supplement ingredients creatine, green tea extract, raspberry ketone, garcinia cambogia, and green coffee bean extract as subject to the ban, along with any product labeled or marketed with statements or images pertaining to “body weight, fat, appetite, overall metabolism, or the process by which nutrients are metabolized,” or maintaining or increasing muscle or strength. Each of the bills would also require retailers to keep implicated products displayed for sale behind a store counter that isn’t accessible to customers, or in a locked case that requires employee assistance to access.

The New Hampshire bill introduced by Representative Alicia Gregg, “Prohibiting the sale of over-the-counter weight loss and muscle building supplements to minors,” was pre-filed, and has no published text yet.