by Anthony Roberts
As you already know, Health Canada has banned the ingredient 1,3dimethylamylamine, the primary stimulant found in many of the most popular preworkout stimulants. However, their full position paper is actually quite enlightening, as the FDA is aware of the recent ban and have gotten their hands on the paper and are currently reviewing it with an eye towards banning the ingredient.
Unlike Ephedra and Prohormones, it’s highly doubtful that we’ll see the industry fighting to keep this stuff around, as it’s primarily a moneymaker for USP Labs, who have dominated the marketplace with #1 rankings in ***, Vitamin Shoppe, and Bodybuilding.com, for their Jack3d product and a top 10 ranking on BB.com for their other 1,3-based product (Oxy Elite Pro). It’s generally thought that the removal of this ingredient from the market place will result in the concomitant removal of USP Labs from being a viable competitor.
Huh? What about their other products?
Simply stated, when you have the #1 product in *** and VS, you have a lot of leverage to get premium shelf space for your other supplements. If Jack3d stops selling as well as it has, USP Labs will lose a lot of their leverage. My local ***, for example, has Jack3d sitting next to a bunch of USP Labs products that (in my estimation) suck. But having a crappy product like Pink Magic sitting next to the store’s #1 best seller means that more people will see it, and the potential for selling that item increases exponentially compared with how it would likely sell if it were sitting on the bottom shelf next to a bottle of Hot Stuff. Twinlab, if you recall, was a one trick pony: they had Ripped Fuel, and when ephedra was banned, they quickly went bankrupt.
That’s because we’re talking about a stimulant here, and the stimulant market is all about how it makes you feel. Certainly nobody was gaining much muscle from the <1,400mgs of creatine per serving, or the <1,000mgs of Beta-alanine…so what’s left? The stimulant properties of this stuff are what got people hooked, and unless USP Labs pulls a rabbit out of their hat and come up with an alternative, we’re going to see a very bad time for them once it gets banned (preceded by several months where it still sells alright, because the average consumer won’t be aware of the ingredient change until they buy a couple more tubs). And while I’m at it, why in the world would anyone think that an amine (i.e. 1,3dimethylamylamine) would produce gains in muscle? It’s an amine. Think methamphetamine. How muscular is your local meth-head?
