Shoppers unwittingly taking unproven cold pills

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More stores integrating homeopathic remedies
The trend of integrating “natural” remedies with mainstream drugs on store shelves started in the early 1990s. A homeopathic brand called Hyland’s, previously only sold in natural food stores, gets credit.

It started by accident, said Hyland’s CEO J.P. Borneman. A drugstore chain shelved Hyland’s remedy for babies’ teething pain with the rest of its teething products. The product was selling well.

“We began to get the suspicion that a few products could hop the fence,” Borneman said.

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“By 2000, we had a half-dozen products solidly in that class. Then Cold-Eeze and Zicam came on the market and suddenly homeopathy was ubiquitous.”

The blurring of lines extends to the product formulas, too.

Cold-Eeze is not as highly diluted as some homeopathic products. A key principle of traditional homeopathy holds that the more diluted a remedy is, the better it works. While Zicam contains one part per 100 of zinc, a Cold-Eeze lozenge contains 13.3 mg of zinc.

“It’s not like it’s microscopic by any means,” said Albert Piechotta, director of marketing and communications for Quigley Corp., maker of Cold-Eeze.

After homeopathic products led the way, the herbal supplement Airborne became the most recent cold remedy crossover success.

“We went out to the mainstream consumer — the working people, the people who really can’t afford to be sick,” McDowell said.

Plug from Oprah Winfrey
He gives word of mouth credit for Airborne’s buzz. But Oprah Winfrey’s plug didn’t hurt.

Winfrey featured McDowell’s wife, Victoria Knight-McDowell, on her show last September in a segment on everyday women who created million-dollar products. Knight-McDowell told the story of how she was a teacher tired of catching colds in the classroom, so she created her own product.

In 2004, Airborne — “created by a school teacher” — sold more than $16 million at drugstores, according to Information Resources Inc., a company that tracks retail sales. That was a 200 percent increase over the previous year.

Airborne is now considered a “destination product,” said Walgreens spokeswoman Tiffani Bruce. “Consumers come to the store and they’re sick and they want to find it. So we merchandise it where they’re most likely to go first, the cold and flu section.”

Back in the Chicago drugstore, McClanahan wasn’t ruling out Zicam after learning it was a homeopathic product.

“I would try it,” she said. But not on this day. She reached for Sudafed. “I need something to clear my head.”

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