Healing herbs

Healing herbs
Echinacea and Calendula

Saturday 23 April 2011

How naturopaths can survive states criminalizing alternative medicine

from foodfreedom: An amendment to North Carolina’s Unauthorized Practice of Medicine Act would have changed the original bill (SB 31) from making alternative medicine a felony to a Class 1 Misdemeanor. Violators would face jail time after a first conviction. However, on April 14, the amendment failed. The bill has gone back to committee for further clarification and possible redraft.

Section 90-19, Practicing without license; penalties of NC’s General Statutes provides a list of exemptions. The only section potentially relating to homeopaths, naturopaths, and herbalists, by my lay reading of it, is (c)(5), which exempts:

“The treatment of the sick or suffering by mental or spiritual means without the use of any drugs or other material means.”

According to Medicine.net, homeopaths use minute quantities of drugs; naturopaths use physical forces such as heat, water, light, air and massage, but may also recommend herbs or drugs; and herbalists use herbs to treat medical conditions. All of these constitute “material means” which will be criminalized in North Carolina’s code, if S.B. 31 passes in its current form.

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