Why Was GHB Banned?
It seems likely, then, that at least some of the motives behind the 1990 FDA ban of GHB were other than those of public safety. Such a ban constitutes the only means of Federal control of a drug neither scheduled by the DEA nor approved by the FDA for prescription use. (The latter status requires considerable expenditure of time and money on the part of a pharmaceutical firm in an investment that can usually be recovered only when the company in question holds an exclusive U.S. patent. In the case of GHB, no such patent exists.) As physician Ward Dean has put it, “the FDA doesn’t like drugs that people use just to ‘feel good’ or unwind after a hard day’s work. In fact, the aphrodisiac properties of GHB may well have been part of the motivation for the ban” [Dean, 1993]. What Are the Real Concerns? The purpose of this section has been to make clear that the dangers widely attributed to GHB have been greatly exaggerated. Were this not the case-and were not the benefits offered by GHB bot
