Laetrile Has Never Been an Approved Cancer Drug in Canada — "Vitamin B17" Capsules Are Still Sold Openly Anyway
Laetrile, the injectable cancer treatment derived from apricot kernels, has no drug approval in Canada and never has. Health Canada has repeatedly and explicitly said so. Yet capsules marketed as "Vitamin B17" — the same compound under a friendlier name — remain for sale in Canadian health food stores and online today, exploiting the gap between a firm ban on therapeutic drug claims and a far less regulated market for raw ingredients and supplements.
What laetrile is, and why it was never approved
Laetrile is a partly synthetic form of amygdalin, a compound found naturally in apricot kernels, bitter almonds, and the seeds of several other fruits. When metabolized in the body, amygdalin releases cyanide — the mechanism its proponents claim selectively kills cancer cells, and the same mechanism that makes it a poison. It was popularized in North America starting in the 1950s under the marketing name "Vitamin B17," despite the fact that amygdalin is not an essential nutrient and no deficiency disease from lacking it has ever been identified; calling it a vitamin is, by definition, a mischaracterization.
⚠️ The evidence has never supported it
A National Cancer Institute review of laetrile found only six cases showing even a partial response out of 93 submitted for evaluation, against an estimated 70,000 Americans who had used the treatment at the time. A Mayo Clinic clinical trial found no benefit for cure, improvement, symptom relief, or survival — only the adverse effects of cyanide toxicity. A Cochrane systematic review concluded there is no reliable evidence for laetrile or amygdalin's alleged anti-cancer effects in patients, while the risk of cyanide poisoning is real.
Still legal to sell — as long as no one says what it's for
Health Canada's position hasn't changed in decades
Health Canada has stated plainly, and repeated as recently as a formal 2020 consumer reminder, that neither apricot kernels, amygdalin, laetrile, nor "Vitamin B17" have been authorized for use in any therapeutic product or natural health product to treat cancer, and that any food product making a "Vitamin B17" content claim violates federal food regulations. Health Canada's advisory further warns that apricot kernels can be difficult to distinguish from almonds by sight and taste, and cautions against consuming them for medicinal purposes at all given the cyanide poisoning risk.
Despite that unambiguous position, capsules and tablets labelled "Vitamin B17" or "Amygdalin" remain openly available through Canadian retailers today — including at least one well-established Toronto supplement retailer that sells the product while directly acknowledging on its own site that "Health Canada does not recognize the use of amygdalin/Laetrile/vitamin B17" for any therapeutic purpose. The products are marketed carefully as a "natural source" ingredient rather than a cancer treatment, which is precisely the framing that keeps them out of the drug-approval regime Health Canada would otherwise require.
When a product crosses the line, enforcement is reactive and narrow
In 2016, Health Canada issued a specific warning against a product called Novodalin B17, sold online at $114.99 for 100 pills and labelled to contain apricot kernel extract, after determining it posed a serious health risk given its unknown and unregulated amygdalin concentration. Health Canada asked the online seller to stop sale — but as of the day the warning was issued, the product remained available for purchase. This is the pattern with laetrile enforcement in Canada generally: individual products are flagged reactively once a specific complaint or discovery triggers a review, while the broader category of "Vitamin B17" capsules continues to be sold under the radar as an ordinary supplement.
Why the injectable version isn't the issue — the oral capsule market is
The classic image of a "laetrile clinic" — IV or intramuscular injections administered under a doctor's supervision — has never operated openly and legally in Canada; injectable laetrile has no drug identification number and no path to legal sale as a therapeutic product here, which has historically pushed Canadian patients seeking that specific form of treatment across the border to unregulated clinics in Mexico, including some already documented on this site. The quieter, more persistent Canadian problem is the oral capsule market: a product with the same active compound, sold as a "natural" supplement rather than a drug, available in health food stores and online without ever needing Health Canada's approval as a cancer treatment — because, on paper, that's not what it's being sold as.
Why this belongs on QuackeryWatch
This is a distinctly Canadian regulatory story: not a rogue clinic defying the law outright, but a decades-old ban that remains fully intact on paper while a parallel, lightly regulated supplement market sells the identical compound under a name explicitly designed to sound like a harmless vitamin. It follows the same shape as our coverage of Gaston Naessens's 714-X, another Canadian-made cancer product that has persisted for decades by working the edges of Health Canada's regulatory categories rather than confronting them directly.