I know this won’t be popular with everyone but I genuinely don’t understand why the default response from people like Makary and the FDA is to ban things instead of regulating them.
If people are clearly using something to manage pain or just function day to day, removing it doesn’t solve the problem. It just forces people to look for alternatives and those alternatives are often worse or less safe.
It feels like a lot of these decisions are made without really considering how people are actually using these things in real life. Instead of focusing on basic safeguards like testing, labeling and age limits, the response is to shut it down entirely.
We’ve seen this pattern before and it usually doesn’t end well. People don’t just stop they adapt.
I’m not saying there should be no rules but banning things outright instead of trying to manage them just seems like it creates more problems than it solves.