| The term "cosmeceutical" is often used in cosmetic marketing, and may be misleading to the consumer. If the consumer understands a cosmeceutical to be close to a pharmaceutical product, he may conclude that cosmeceuticals are required to go through the same testing for efficacy and quality control as compulsory for medication. This may allow the seller to charge the consumer more for a product which may actually be less effective and/or of poorer quality than perceived. Nonetheless, according to the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act "do not recognize any such category as "cosmeceuticals." A product can be a drug, a cosmetic or a mixture of both, but the term "cosmeceutical" has no meaning under the law". Moreover, the FDA states that: "Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act identifies drugs as those products that cure, treat, alleviate or prevent disease or that influence the structure or function of the human body. As drugs are subject matter to a concentrated review and approval process by FDA, cosmetics are not approved by FDA proceeding to sale. If a product has drug belongings, it must be approved as a drug." To evade inquiry and retributive action by the United States Federal Trade Commission, cosmeceuticals which do not are going to to be regulated as drugs by the FDA are vigilantly labeled to avoid making statements which would point out that the product has drug properties. Every such claim made regarding the product must be verified by scientific confirmation as being truthful. On the whole, it is to the financial advantage of the cosmeceutical producer that their products are not regulated by the FDA as drugs, because the FDA review process for drugs can be very expensive and may not yield a legally-marketable product if the FDA rejects approval of the product. Yet, as mentioned above, the reputation of the product may be wrongly enhanced if the customer mistakenly believes that a "cosmeceutical" is held to the same FDA standards as a drug.
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