New regulations need to be implemented for herbal medicines and dietary supplements

Abstract

Today, many of the herbal medicine and dietary supplements are apparently safe bearing unsafe characteristics. This gives threat to infringe on consumer’s right to safety. The reason is a weakned regulatory affair with regard to its standardization, adulteration; interaction with other herbs & drugs, and merge reports of adverse events available after herbal medicine and dietary supplements have been given. Therefore a dietary supplements and health education act (DSHEA) has been implemented in 1994, under which act, many of the definition of standards and mechanism are described but it was inappropriate towards the safety of public health. In this article many such issues have been described with the need of new regulations to be implemented by FDA of all the countries. The suggestive actions may hamper many of the manufacturers but can act as a safeguard for public who have blind faith on many of the dietary supplements promoted by misleading advertisements. Thus, Government must be active to frame new regulatory safeguards for such products.

Keywords: Herbal medicine; dietary supplements; Regulations; DSHEA; FDA