> Your argument of self-regulation and lack of government intervention is pretty well undermined by the current situation of hundreds sick and a dozen deaths in a period of months.
No, this is a black market that exists because of the government prohibiting the legal market.
And the black market does a shit job of correcting these problems because it lacks the transparency of the legal market. For instance, it's extremely difficult to determine the reputation of sellers who have to hide their identity.
Let's also keep in mind government intervention can be actively dangerous if they think they're protecting people from themselves. Back during prohibition, for instance, they poisoned 10,000 people[1] to try and scare them into not drinking.
> Sure, the market may correct, but the damage done before that isn't fixed.
No one can see into the future. We didn't know the war on drugs would cause all the problems it did. We saw a serious problem getting worse and identified the behavior that seemed to be causing problems and then made those actions illegal.
And we already have the government involved in markets when it decides civil cases. The best case for regulation is when you have people suing each other for damages and the government, which has to rule on these cases anyway, passes a law that simply enforces the outcome of many similar judgements.
[1]: https://vinepair.com/articles/government-prohibition-poison-...