You really can't fault stores for selling a placebo if people keep buying it. The real question is why do people keep buying it? This is a problem of knowledge

You really can't fault stores for selling a placebo if people keep buying it. The real question is why do people keep buying it? This is a problem of knowledge, and a problem of trust. People have been generally ignorant about the ineffectiveness of phenylephrine, because most people have enough trust in their pharmacy that they would not expect the entire "decongestants" section at the store to be 100% snake oil. But our pharmacies sold us snake oil, did it for decades, and FDA backed them up on it. And we ate it up like innocent puppies. I don't think this means capitalism is broken, and I don't think it means people are so stupid that we're doomed, and I don't think it means we need government intervention at every step. But we shouldn't let this one slide by. We shouldn't let the pharmacies the ignorance card: they knew they were selling us a placebo. How many other products fall into this pattern? We should all think about taking a take a step back and performing a trust audit on our pharmacies. Personally, I suspect we won't always have to keep facing this problem of never knowing which suppliers are trustworthy. I suspect there's something missing. I don't know what it is: an app, like a peer review app? A website? A law? A non-profit research group? A revolution? A man can have hope.