How intended use is established
On this page9
Claims
The direct route. What the label, the packaging, the website and the advertising say the product is for. This is the one you write, and the one you can audit in an afternoon.
Consumer expectations
What a buyer reasonably understands the product to be for. A category that is widely sold on a particular promise carries that expectation into your product even if your own copy is silent about it.
Certain ingredients
An ingredient with a known therapeutic use can itself establish a drug intent. The ingredient is evidence of what the product is meant to do.
Why silence is not a strategy
Leaving the claim off the label while the category, the product name and the imagery all make it is not a defense. Intended use is read from the whole presentation.
Where this bites a small range
Product names. A name that contains the promise carries it everywhere the name goes, including into the listing title, the invoice and the search result, and it cannot be qualified by small print further down the page.
The practical test
Hand the finished front panel to somebody who has never seen the product and ask what they think it does. If the answer is about what their body will do, you have a drug claim whether or not you wrote one.
Where the three routes disagree
They usually do not. The common case is all three pointing the same way: careful copy, a conventional ingredient list and a product the customer reads as a conditioner. The case worth attention is a careful label on a product whose category, name and ingredient all promise something the copy does not, because that is the configuration where a maker believes they are a cosmetic and the presentation says otherwise.
Review the whole surface, not the artwork
The label, the carton, the product title, the listing bullets, the first paragraph of the product page, the FAQ, the pinned social post and the answer you give at a market. All of them speak to intended use, and the ones that are not artwork are the ones that get written quickly and reviewed by nobody.