Plants have been used for disease treatment and health care since ancient times. Despite a setback in the middle 19th century, medicinal plants still form the basis of traditional or indigenous health systems. Herbs whether being used by a Siddha practitioner in South India, to isolate a new alkaloid in a research lab in Switzerland, as a prescription drug in Germany or as dietary supplement in the United States, the overall demand is on the rise. While medicinal plant materials have been used by a large number of industries both for medicinal and non-medicinal uses, demand for crude plant drugs for medicinal use was largely for the isolation of pure drugs. In fact many of our present drugs are derived directly or indirectly from plants. The past three decades however have seen dramatic changes in the climate for botanical drugs throughout the world. Rapidly rising exports of medicinal plants attests to worldwide interest in these products.

Today medicinal plants are traded in large volumes not only for isolation of single purified drugs, but also as standardized and non-standardized extracts, as also as starting materials for semi-synthesis of ethical drugs. This is in addition to the usage of plants in traditional medical systems such as Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine etc. These systems are no longer localized but are adapted and practised by amalgamation into western and other modern herbal therapies.

Global awakening of interest towards safe, effective and natural drugs is one of the factors that has made governments, policy makers, international and national regulatory bodies to streamline their availability. Concerns about the unregulated availability of herbal products, especially in view of the reported toxic effects of some herbal drugs and their interaction with other medications is bringing up issues of ways and means of regulating their availability and usage. Over-exploitation of valuable plant resources, patent issues, protection of indigenous IPR are critical issues to be sorted out. Since the market and regulation of herbal products is diverse throughout the world, time-tested traditional medicines of well-documented systems such as Ayurveda from India are facing several hurdles for their entry into the international market. Improved if not novel quality control procedures are needed to demonstrate the quality of the poly-constituent herbals, since they cannot be evaluated by methods developed for single pure drugs. Such newer methods of standardization will not only help clear the regulatory hurdles for traditional herbal medicines, but will also be the much needed solution to the scientific challenge faced by herbal drugs. The approval of the pending IND for herbal drugs with the US FDA may possibly open the flood gates for the entry of herbal drugs into the ethical drugs market. This hopefully shall be a turning point in the global trade of herbal drugs and related products.