It is possible to make a lot of money by selling products with medical benefits. In the US, before the FDA, there was an era of patent medicine where anyone could put anything they wanted in a bottle and sell it as a cure for any disease. The burgeoning snake oil industry took a hit when the government decided to implement a series of standards requiring proof of safety and efficacy, regulating what is marketed to the public, and requiring medical supervision for more complex or serious drugs.
But by then the snake oil business was well established, very profitable and had the potential to break with people beyond their means. They didn't just go away. This has resulted in a constant struggle to circumvent these regulations, weaken them, and make billions of dollars by selling questionable medical products to the public.
Regular readers here know that snake oil salesmen are very successful. State and federal governments have successfully moved to loosen regulations and eliminate exemptions. Moreover, regulatory agencies are underfunded and have politicians who do everything to ensure that they are unable to perform their duties properly.
They are also very creative in their efforts to legalize snake oil. Perhaps their biggest victory was the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) , which created a separate category for herbal supplements and allowed for "structural efficacy" claims (intentionally leading to regulatory health claims). The industry has grown and new patents have become major frontiers in the pharmaceutical industry. That may sound harsh, but that's because snake oil has become commonplace through decades of lobbying and marketing.
As evidence, I offer the well-documented fact that the herbal supplement industry (as the patent medicine industry used to be) uses similar tactics, including adulteration, substitution, and contamination.
Several recent reports, including from Australia, indicate that adulteration, particularly the deliberate inclusion of pharmaceutical drugs in marketed "supplements," is still widespread. Many herbal male enhancement products, including Tantra Jelly, ampoule blood pills and Throb herbal supplements, have been found to contain the drugs sildenafil, tadalafil or vardenafil (commonly known as Viagra and Cialis). This is very common when making online purchases from foreign companies.
This is a serious health hazard. These drugs are often uncontrolled and can cause serious side effects and interactions. Additionally, most counterfeit substances are not pharmaceutical-grade drugs, but drug analogs made in unregulated laboratories that are dangerous and are sometimes withdrawn from the market.
The most frequently counterfeited products are weight loss and erectile dysfunction products, and one study found that 81 percent of these products contained at least one counterfeit drug.
Researchers describe fraud as a "growing trend", which is far from progressive; They are becoming difficult to control. In the year Between 2007 and 2019, the FDA found 1,068 unique herbal products to be intentionally adulterated with drugs. Online sales are exacerbating this trend as foreign companies are more difficult to control. Often the FDA sends out fraud alerts, for example (you get all these notifications, right?).
There's a reason many herbal supplements are deceptively full of real drugs because there isn't much evidence that herbal supplements work for anything. Most studies are of poor quality, if any. High-quality studies often show failures. (A detailed examination is beyond the scope of this article, but see here, here, here, here and here.)
It's not surprising. Herbal products are raw, contain dozens or hundreds of ingredients, typically have low amounts and even low bioavailability, and vary widely in effectiveness. If a particular herb contains a pharmacologically active substance, it is impossible to effectively control drug dosage, timing, and interactions without knowing its half-life, absorption, protein binding, route of elimination, and drug-drug interactions. If you study the right active ingredients and know all these things, you will have a medicine on your hands.
So why are you worried about asking for what you want and being sold junk? Or, if you want to compete, give drugs that are out of control but claim to be herbal concoctions that actually work.
Snake oil salesmen have been doing this since at least the 19th century. They are currently experiencing a resurgence due to a lack of consumer protection and regulatory efforts.