[sholladay]

If sunscreen is supposed to provide specific health benefits, namely to reduce cancer risk, then it is a drug, not a cosmetic. Regulations should ensure it provides the intended effect without undue harm. Cosmetics are given more leeway because they are, in principle, neutral from a medical perspective. Why would you want to treat a cancer related product like that? Saving upfront time and money, at the risk of having to spend a lot more time and money later in healthcare, is not a good reason. If anything, we might head the opposite direction. Some people think we should start regulating dietary supplements as drugs rather than food.

[guhidalg]

FDA does regulate cosmetics components, and FTC regulates what claims they can make. It’s hard to make a binary decision that one thing is a drug and something else isn’t. You can appreciate there is a spectrum of side effects with moisturizer and sunblock on one end, supplements in the middle, and chemotherapy drugs on the other end.

Personally, I think that Americans simply don’t treat skin cancer as seriously as they should, and so the market has not provided more choices.

[alistairSH]

Sure, but that doesn’t excuse the FDA from slow-rolling/blocking new ingredients that should be better. As noted in the article, the sunscreens available here would not pass muster in the EU despite supposedly less stringent rules.