I had a cold a year or two ago, I had used the last of a bottle of actually working cough medicine, attempting to buy a replacement failing to do so, I found i

I had a cold a year or two ago, I had used the last of a bottle of actually working cough medicine, attempting to buy a replacement failing to do so, I found it had been banned. Turns out the active ingredient was morphine, which is apparently quite an effective decongestant in very low doses(and variants have been used as such for thousands of years) That started me on a quest for a good cough medicine. My research turned up some interesting results. Different countries have their own go-to medications for decongestants. Actual different drugs, not just the same thing under a different name. None of them work. Anything that does work is banned unless the people making it have been doing so for a couple of hundred years, then it seems that they just pretend it's not there. When challenged the industry defended their sale of ineffective products by saying if they didn't work, people wouldn't buy them. Anecdotal evidence is taken as gospel in many public health circles. When an attempt to have a substance banned was rejected on the basis of no evidence of abuse, it appears that means 'try again later', not gather evidence. You only have to wait for someone who shares your ideology once and it gets done and getting it undone is too much work for anyone to consider. It's almost enough to send you off to a music festival to gather your own supplies for home remedies.