FDA Targets ‘Cosmeceuticals’ Straddling the Line of Regulation

Wrinkle creams with retinol and a growing crop of beauty treatments that are partly pharmaceutical may need to be regulated as drugs, the top U.S. official overseeing the cosmetics industry said.

The industry calls them “cosmeceuticals,” a term that doesn’t exist in regulation, Michael Landa, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said in testimony prepared for a House subcommittee hearing today. The claims companies make that the products contain active ingredients may classify them as drugs, he said.