DISCUSSION
Will a lawsuit leave CVS and Walgreens feeling sick over homeopathic remedies?
Written by RetailWire Staff
Photo: Getty Images/vgajic
Major retail pharmacies are facing legal battles over placing homeopathic remedies in the medicine aisle with the rest of the pills.
Lawsuits originally filed in 2018 and 2019 against CVS and Walgreens, respectively, by non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI) alleged that displaying homeopathic products as medicine was deceptive and in violation of the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA), according to Ars Technica. Lower courts dismissed the lawsuits, but now the District’s highest court has unanimously decided to allow the trials to move forward.
While some customers may read “homeopathy” as synonymous with “natural,” homeopathy has a specific technical meaning. Homeopathy is based on an alternative interpretation of chemistry that is seen as inconsistent with contemporary science. Homeopathic practitioners believe that certain ingredients that would cause illness in healthy people, when diluted in water, imbue the water with the ability to fight that illness. The current scientific consensus is that pills containing substances that have been so diluted have no active ingredient, thus no mechanism of action.
Skeptic and debunker James Randi would frequently demonstrate the inefficacy of homeopathic remedies by downing an entire bottle of homeopathic sleep aids on-stage during speeches, as he discussed in a YouTube video embedded in a 2011 NPR article. The stunt inspired a yearly event by UK skeptic group 10:23 Campaign where members would megadose homeopathic sleep aids — sometimes at one million times the recommended dose — to demonstrate that they had no effect.
The regulatory gray era governing homeopathic remedies in the U.S. has occasionally had serious ramifications for customer safety.
For instance in 2009, cold remedy Zicam was marketed as homeopathic despite containing a significant amount of zinc, according to a Quad City Herald article on the debacle. While in a true homeopathic remedy the zinc would have been diluted near or past the point of non-existence, the amount of zinc in Zicam was concentrated enough to cause permanent anosmia (loss of smell) in some customers, leading to a U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) intervention.
In 2019 the FDA issued draft guidance for an enforcement approach to homeopathic products. No homeopathic products have been approved by the FDA.
- Walmart, CVS face trial for putting sham homeopathic products next to real meds – Ars Technica
- Homeopathic Medicine Overdosers Survive Unscathed – NPR
- Consumers assume homeopathic products are ‘natural’ and cannot be harmful, but this is not always the case – Quad City Herald
- Homeopathic Products – U.S. Food & Drug Administration