Before 1951, drug companies decided which medicines needed prescriptions. Two pharmacist-legislators, Carl Durham and Herbert Humphrey, passed a law splitting drugs into prescription-only and over-the-counter categories. It protected patients from unsafe drugs but also gave doctors and insurers control over what patients could buy.
2 pharmacists wrote the law that took you out of your prescription. In 1951, 2 pharmacists wrote a law that took you out of your own prescription. Here's what they were fixing. Before that, drug companies mostly decided for themselves whether a product needed a prescription. Same drug, different company, different rules. People got hurt. So Carl Durham and Herbert Humphrey, a congressman and a senator, both pharmacists, drew a line. 2 categories: prescription and over-the-counter. Habit-forming were unsafe without supervision. You now need someone else's permission. That's That's probably the right call. I'd have voted for it. Now look at what it built: an entire class of products where the person who needs it cannot buy it. Someone else decides, someone else signs. Which means from 1951 forward, if you're selling that drug, you're never really selling it to the patient. Yesterday, the payer stopped being the patient. Today, so did the buyer. Somebody was gonna notice that. Somebody did. That's part 3. No villains required.
