Context for readers from countries where this isn't an issue, or anyone who hasn't followed decongestant news: one of the most effective decongestants is called

Context for readers from countries where this isn't an issue, or anyone who hasn't followed decongestant news: one of the most effective decongestants is called pseudoephedrine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoephedrine In the past this was easily available, with the most popular brand being Sudafed. My parents always told me that one should take Sudafed when flying after having had a cold, in order to avoid severe ear pain from the pressure changes, but people would also obviously take it when not flying, just in order to reduce the discomfort of the congestion itself. Pseudoephedrine is very effective. It is also used to synthesize the somewhat related illegal drug methamphetamine ("meth"). Historically, meth manufacturers would hire people to buy large amounts of pseudoephedrine pills at pharmacies and supermarkets, then grind them up and synthesize meth from them. In order to deter this, authorities in the U.S. restricted the availability of pseudoephedrine, while not making it prescription-only, by limiting the amount that people could buy, and requiring buyers to show ID and be put on a registry (which law enforcement could use in investigations). I think this is the only drug that is treated this way. Some people stopped buying pseudoephedrine entirely, either because they were offended by these rules or because they were afraid that they could wrongly be implicated in meth investigations if they appeared to buy it too often. The pharmaceutical industry produced an alternative called phenylephrine, the substance that this proceeding relates to. Most manufacturers of pseudoephedrine-based drugs, including Sudafed, formulated alternative decongestants using phenylephrine. There are no legal restrictions on phenylephrine drugs; one can buy them anonymously and in any quantity. Customers have complained for years that these are much less effective than the original formulations. A couple of years ago this regulatory authority started looking into the question of whether phenylephrine is actually completely useless as a decongestant (rather than just much worse than pseudoephedrine). Their preliminary review of studies suggested that it is probably, in fact, useless. This proceeding is now proposing to ban it on the grounds that it's ineffective and so people should not be encouraged to buy and use it as a medicine for purposes for which it doesn't actually work. (There doesn't seem to be much corresponding initiative to remove or reduce the restrictions on pseudoephedrine.)