Since homeopathic “medicines” can be sold, I don’t see why not.
Suppose I had sugar pills made up, and packed them in boxes with the label:
“For Boosting The Body’s Natural Defenses”
“Not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease”
Contents: No active ingredients; sugar, food coloring, and inactive ingredients 100%.
Directions: Take one tablet per hour, until symptoms disappear.
Side Effects: None Known. Consult a physician if symptoms continue.
Would I be OK with the FDA, and other reglatory agencies?
Don’t know if it’s legal.
But in adult video stores there are “Spanish Fly” type products that suggest they’ll increase sexual desire. Then in the description it will say “Allow the placebo effect of ultra fly increase her desire” And then for contents it says “ultra fly is specially formulated with pure inert ingredients”. The ignorance of users may be a legal loophole.
As you pointed out, there’s plenty of placebos already out there being sold. Just make sure you run your ad copy past a good lawyer so you don’t make any illegal claims. Get somebody familiar with advertising law - it’s a tricky specialty. For example, it’s legal to advertise you sell the best toothpaste but it’s illegal to advertise you sell better toothpaste.
Considering your desire to cover all legal angles, you ought to add a warning for diabetics.
All homeopathic “medicines” are placebos and most have no active ingredient, so I guess the answer is yes.
IIRC, anything sold for human cosumption (eating) must have the standard nutritional packaging information. Obviously, not so for medicines - just ingredients list.
As was said, I think you’d be totally in the clear as long as you run it by a lawyer first to be sure you’re in compliance with the Dietary Health and Supplement Act of 1994 (thanks a lot, Orrin Hatch) and other regulatory laws that it would fall under.
It’s the existence of things like Airborne and Head-On that makes me think I should give up on the whole pharmaceutical gig, what with the actual science and all, and start my own homeopathy company instead. I don’t think I’d even have to manufacture under GMP conditions.
Hell, you could probably label them as “A breakthrough in Placebo Therapy” and cite “numerous studies on the placebo effect” and there are plenty of dopes that would buy your product. Especially if you sold it on late night cable with an 800 number.
I had a small business selling homeopathic remedies on eBay a few years ago. I never really sold enough to make it worthwhile, and I don’t remember all the details now but here are some of the things I did…
I studied the theory and the remedies and their supposed effects. I registered with FDA as a drug manufacturer, repackager and reseller. I don’t recall now why I thought that was important, but it was free and they sent an inspector to my house.
Some remedies I ‘brewed’ myself and some I diluted from purchased pill or powder forms and dissolved. Using Hannemans theory of ‘like cures like’ and dilution theory, I was pretty well convince that the water coming from my tap came ‘pre-loaded’ with exposure to every illness in the world and all I needed to do was bottle it, but my spouse felt this would be unethical and required I actually make the stuff- LOL.
Incidentally, some of my family members were upset with me about selling the remedies. One thought my remedies would not be effective because I did not believe in them, the other thought I was just ripping people off.
So, I bought the supplies (cheap enough), a bunch of attractive bottles with dropper tops and some shrink wrap to seal the bottles, and used a label making program to print some attractive labels. I was careful to couch my statements for each remedy is vague enough words so to as not be making any actual health claims and thus get crosswise with the FDA.
For example: If you are having stuffy runny nose and watery eyes, you would need a remedy that would trigger those same symptoms. Allium Cepa is the cure! (Allium Cepa - ABC Homeopathy)
Allium Cepa is also the common onion. So I would take one part onion and 9 parts water and dilute. That’s a 10x remedy. But I wanted my remedies to be really ‘strong’ (in homeopathy, less is more) so I would dilute again to reach a 100x remedy. Finally, I mixed the remedy with some alcohol (cheap vodka) as a preservative, bottle and sell. The label may have said something like “may help”, “possible indications”, “used for”. etc. I also offered custom, blended and alcohol free remedies and touted their purity where appropriate.
Initially, I sold them on eBay for less than average, but found they sold a little better if I raised the price. I often listed the same or similar remedies for varying prices and varied the labels to try to reach different audiences. I thought about building a display and asking my local health food stores if they would stock them and or selling them at our local farmers markets, but was just too lazy to do those things (cuz I had a real job and was chasing toddlers, too).
I also went to the post office and figured out how to ship one or two bottles and just bought a bunch of proper sized envelopes and proper postage stamps so I had the stuff here at the house. If I had an order in the morning I would whip it up if it was not already made and drop it in my mail box before getting the kids up. Pretty easy.
But like I said, it was never a money maker. I guess I sold several bottles a week (probably about $25.00 to $60.00) and I just got tired of dealing with eBay and Paypal. I think I could have done better if I dedicated more time to it, though.
I also sold a couple of magic spells on eBay. That required much less work (LOL!) but the people who buy magic spells are kind of strange and I did not like dealing with them.
This is funny, in a sad way.
That family member is a believer in ‘faith based medicine’. Her proof was that she was coming down with a cold, took a homeopathic remedy, and got better relatively quickly in her opinion.
I know…
Well, if you dilluted it enough, I think the sugar would cure diabetes.
Interesting stuff. I’ve pondered doing something similar myself, but never got to the stage of looking into licensing requirements etc.
I did wonder whether “homeopathic remedy” manufacturers actually have to bother mixing up and diluting the actiuve ingredients, or whether they can just skip that step and use pure water/sugar/whatever, and if anyone quibbles, just say: “Prove it!”, since a bottle of plain water will be analytically identical to most homeopathic dilutions.
Also, I’m not sure that my conscience could take charging people obscene prices for sugar pills when they should be taking real medicine. Okay, it probably could.