The more general deeply-entrenched golden goose here is branding, which applies to much more than OTC medicines. Make it so the active ingredients have to be listed prominently - the largest text on the front of the product package - and these concerns diminish greatly.

It would also fix the homeopathic snake oil as well, which has started showing up as options in previously-reputable medicine aisles. So at any rate, be on guard if you don't want to end up accidentally buying a bottle of water plus flavoring in your cold-addled state.

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ryandrake 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Making the active ingredients prominent is a good start but not sufficient. As the article points out, the word "phenylephrine" looks/sounds similar enough to "pseudoephedrine" to broadly fool the population.

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mindslight 2 hours ago | parent [-]

That's why I said "diminish greatly" rather than solve - by doing something basically everybody should be able to agree on regardless if you think a given product should be on the market or not.

They should probably have to split up large words with dashes or even spaces "phenyl-ephrine" "psuedo-ephedrine". Maybe even "phenyl-eph-rine" "psuedo-eph-edrine". One authoritative list published by the FDA (they already keep a list of what's allowed to be sold OTC in the first place, right?) of how the active ingredient names have to be distinctly stylized to best inform.

	▲	ryandrake an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It just seems like a quick patch that doesn't acknowledge or address the root cause: that the FDA is supposed to be regulating both safety and effectiveness, but it is largely abdicating the "effectiveness" role over to companies' marketing departments. If corporate marketing can convince the public that the serpensoleum drug works, then that's enough to put it in a shiny box in the drug store.