Probably because most people want regulations and enforcement around pharmaceuticals. If we decide that the government has no power to pass laws surrounding drugs we'd be hurting ourselves.
This isn't how we do things and to some these ideas seem like madness, but it's hard to argue that our existing system doesn't harbor its own brand of lunacy. Putting everything in the hands of an central government is a path we've chosen, but it's not the only path.
UL is partially funded by taxpayer money in the form of grants, is itself regulated by the US government (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XVI...) and for decades it was even tax-exempt! That's not a great example of some random but trustworthy body selflessly protecting the masses without the involvement or oversight of government.
> Finally, we could offer no direct regulation, but states could place strong penalties for any harms caused by dangerous products
And if you get seriously sickened by a product you then must have the resources to prove in court against a massive corporation that it was a specific drug, from one specific company that made you sick and that there's no chance it was any of the other totally unregulated and untested drugs from random sources that you've taken over the course of your lifetime that caused the problem. You'd also have to somehow trace a drug back to a manufacturer who could pop-up and vanish at a moments notice since nobody is keeping track of anything. Not ideal...
> to some these ideas seem like madness, but it's hard to argue that our existing system doesn't harbor its own brand of lunacy. Putting everything in the hands of an central government is a path we've chosen, but it's not the only path.
We've fought tooth and nail for what few protections we have today while pharmaceutical companies have worked tirelessly to exploit and undermine that same system of regulations. With so much at stake, it makes sense that people would hesitate to throw away what progress we have made to try some new unproven thing, but you're right that our current system has its flaws so changes need to happen. What's important is that the end result of those changes makes us all safer and makes it harder for companies to get away with abuses.
As far as leaving everything up to individual states, I know that if I were a drug manufacturer it would be a hell of a lot less of a burden if I only had one set of rules to follow, only had to allow one group of inspectors into my facilities, only had one set of licensees I had to acquire and maintain, only had one place I had to report side effects and submit approvals to etc. Putting everything in the hands of one centralized agency that covers the entire nation is a huge win for drug companies and consumers who don't need to worry that the drug they pick up on one state isn't held to the same standards as a drug they pick up in another. Sometimes centralization is simply the most efficient way to handle something and it'd take a lot to demonstrate that decentralization would be an improvement for pretty much anybody.
The war on drugs would have never gotten off the ground. We would have whole above board industries for recreational drugs which would just be "agriculture" instead of black markets and cartels. Government couldn't touch birth control, PrEP, or whatever bs de jour they want to ban. People wouldn't have to worry about living with chronic pain because they get labeled as a drug seeker.
I wouldn't be so eager to go back to the days of snake oil salesmen who can be fully honest about what something contains, while lying through their teeth about what effects it would have, or the research they've done.
Where if you do take something that makes you sick, or a batch of bad drugs floods the US market you can't possibly track down the people responsible because there are countless people on the street and the internet selling medications, with new unlicensed and untracked sellers popping up and disappearing all the time and no way to trace a particular pill or formulation back to the maker. Where the people who are sickened or the families of those who have died will be required to have enough money and time to take massive corporations to court and prove that a specific company and their drug was responsible for the harm, and that it couldn't possibly have been any of the other totally unregulated drugs the victim had taken at any point in their lifetime.
Where quality control is not mandated and there is no inspection or oversight of manufacturers. Where testing and clinical trials aren't required. Where there is no post-marketing monitoring for adverse effects. No rules against selling addictive substances to adults and children.
Where it's perfectly legal for pharmaceutical companies to bribe doctors to prescribe their drugs to the sick and desperate and to sell them at any price. Where there are no limits whatsoever on advertising them. No rules on how drugs should be labeled or regulations requiring sellers or manufacturers to make people aware of a drug's side effects or contraindications ("Our drug is perfectly safe! It isn't our fault the dumb consumer took it with that other drug and it killed them! They should have done their research! Caveat emptor!"). No rules about drugs requiring a prescription leading to people buying and taking them inappropriately and nothing to stop people from stockpiling essential medications making them scarce.
Over and over again we see how even our current regulations have been weakened and the regulators captured by industry and how and it's resulted in our regulations failing to protect people. We've already seen how totally ineffective those commercial speech and negligence laws you want to exclusively depend on have been at protecting Americans from cosmetics (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/harmful-chemicals...) and supplements https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/14/diet-pills-and-...) that are almost entirely unregulated.
I'm all for the legalization of recreational drugs, but I want those drugs heavily regulated like any other pharmaceutical. Be careful what you wish for, and spend some time studying what things were like before the US had drug regulations before you go suggesting we throw away over a hundred years of progress. I promise that while things aren't great, they are much better now than they were before we regulated drugs.