We already had that.
It was a disaster.
For centuries. No. Millennia.
Until enough people died to make regulation palatable.
Going back to that would be like going back to bloodletting to balance the four humors.
"Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath
"We've got computers now man that changes things, we'll build an ai-enabled pharma tech stack on the blockchain" --some techbro
We might have had other, confounding factors during that time period. And while he did mention "deregulation", he also indicated that he only wanted partial deregulation... that there would still be some demand for purity/dosage.
When people talk about deregulation, there is this idea that regulations already exist. If you're talking about periods from anitquity where no regulations existed at all, this isn't comparable to a period of deregulation where presumably everyone knows what the regulations were trying to accomplish and agree on those and other basic scientific principles. We also had no FAA 10,000 years ago, and no one died in plane crashes then, right? That proves how awesome regulation is in the same way your example proves how awful it is. How can these two arguments reach entirely difference conclusions, do you think?
>"Oh but baby we've changed" --some random private equity sociopath
Or, just possibly, people come to realize over time that their initial knee-jerk reactions went too far, and cause measurable harm that they want to reduce. Unfettered capitalism does get a few things right... it can go from supply shortages to excess quickly. Let it work.
Thank god a strong and burdensome FDA existed in the United States, back when men were free and America was great.