It's deceptive. If you're in a pharmacy and see a number of cold and flu medicine grouped together on one shelf, you'd be pretty pissed if you bought one and didn't realize that it was just Mike & Ikes with no medicinal ingredients.
Your marker and highlighter example is flawed because those are both useful for writing and are usually distinct in packaging and form.
Often, in the past, judges would use a test of 'would a reasonable person be deceived by this?' and come out on your side.
Increasingly, due to people calling for increasingly less government control, the test is becoming 'does the government have the right to tell a store owner which shelves a legal product can be on?' and come out on the other side.
I can see both sides, but in general, a government that protects 'reasonable consumers' over the interests of businesses seems preferable.
Agreed. People rallying against "big government" annoys me because they're invariably for government intervention when it aligns with their personal belief.
I do not think that the government should regulate information or speech, especially with the express purpose of censoring things[0]. I do think the government should regulate food, medicine, or other commercial or consumer goods that are subject to counterfeiting/fraud or where perversion of quality affects safety or longevity. When I go to the pharmacy, I want to feel confident that the medicine I'm purchasing meets a high bar and is both safe and effective. I want to feel confident that the avocado oil I'm purchasing is actually "Avocado Oil" and not rancid or adulterated. Etc.
[0] For example, the Canadian government is trying to push through sweeping legislation that would give them the ability to regulate the Internet: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-what-is-bil...
That's the key point. It's deceptive (and should probably be illegal) to make a product look like medicine. It doesn't matter where you place it, if you put a banana on the side of the aspirins no one is going to complain it didn't cure their headache.