Which benzos was he peddling? I don’t recall that.

I remember him touting a substance he called “chaperon”, about ten years back, as an alcohol alternative. But it wasn’t a benzo, it was somewhere in the phenethlyamine superfamily IIRC (the internet tells me it was MEAI, a substituted, cyclized PEA).

He now has a company selling non-alcoholic spirit substitutes based on herbal ingredients, called Sentia, and is trying to get approval for something called “alcarelle” but I have no idea what class of substance that is and it hasn’t yet made it to market so saying it didn’t catch on seems a touch premature.

I don’t agree with the characterisation of him as naive, in fact I think his book delves into the societal and social effects of drugs quite well. The only way he could be considered naive IMHO is that he seems to have expected politicians to listen to reason.