Synthetic Drugs Purported to be Botanical Substances in Dietary Supplements

Adulteration is a major safety and quality issue affecting dietary supplements worldwide. This form of fraud is economically motivated, with unscrupulous raw material suppliers or manufacturers hoping to sell a greater volume of their product and achieve greater profits by substituting or diluting authentic botanical ingredients, by increasing weight and volume with inert materials, or by artificially increasing potency through addition of undeclared botanical or pharmaceutical substances. While much has been published on adulteration with inert materials, herbal substitutions, spiking of botanicals with natural products, and adulteration of botanicals with pharmaceuticals in well-known categories such as benzodiazepines in herbal sleep aids, there is another emerging trend. We report here the recent identification by Health Canada of certain synthetic, pharmacologically active substances, such as DMAA allegedly from geranium oil, which are declared on the label of supplements to be natural products to which the botanical has been standardized. Unlike undeclared adulterants which can be detected by quality control or compliance testing, these misleadingly labeled adulterants can be more deceptive for consumers and regulators alike.