What could cause U.S. Marshals to raid a cosmetics company?

Hawking a dangerous diet drug? Send them in.
Contaminated pet food? On the double.
Eyelash conditioning wands? Wait, what?

By announcing Allergan’s development of an eyelash-growing drug and the launch of Jan Marini’s new drug-free eyelash-conditioning product, Thursday’s piece in the Times (“Longer Lashes in a Tube, or Maybe Not”) put the spotlight on a growing battle between pharmaceutical and skin-care companies for the same turf. With drugs more commonly providing cosmetic benefits, such as Botox, Restylane, and Renova, and cosmetics mimicking drugs, the only discernable boundary remaining between the two in the moisturizer-soaked marketplace is the right to claim a product works (i.e., affects the structure and function of skin). And under the law, that’s a privilege reserved for drugs.

No doubt Jan Marini Skin Research incurred the ire of Allergan, the makers of Botox and of the lash-growing glaucoma drug supposedly used in Marini’s wildly popular Age Intervention Eyelash product. The buzz about and demand for the lash-enhancer was huge, and judging by the queues at last November’s ISPA conference, where spa directors go to learn about and shop for products, it made the company a killing. So, I suspect, when just a few weeks later on November 16 the FDA sent U.S. Marshals to the Marini warehouses and seized $2 million worth of “already embargoed” lash conditioners containing the “unapproved drug,” it wasn’t just for consumer safety, as the government agency claimed.