First, people should understand the difference between medicines and medicinal products. It’s critical, and many/most, including doctors, may not know it.

A medicine is mostly a pure chemical (powder or liquid). On the other hand, the medicinal product is a package, e.g., tablets (pills), capsules, suspensions, syrups, ointments, etc. These “packages” are to deliver medications to the body conveniently. It is just like juice or milk in cartons. The actual or needed substance is the juice or milk, and a carton or package delivers/transfers its content, then goes to waste.

Many (non-active or non-medicinal) components are mixed and/or compressed with actual medicines to develop these packages (e.g., tablets). Once someone takes the tablet (package) orally, the actual drug/medicine comes out of it and gets absorbed, and the rest is a waste and is supposed to come out of the body unaltered and without causing any harm.

However, if one takes the drug/medicines, say acetaminophen for Tylenol as a powder in an equivalent amount and mix with some water and drinks it, they will have their dose of medicine. They may act faster than their packaged versions, as they do not get to dissolve in the body as they are pre-dissolved.

Very important—medicines/drugs obtained from chemical suppliers (chemists) will be genuine and have much better assurance of quality and purity as they are certified against authentic (reference) standards.

On the other hand, drug products are only available from pharmaceutical manufacturing or pharmacies (a twisted version of chemical manufacturing), without any testing against (reference) standards, only based on a claim that they are approved by FDA/CDC/USP (the pharmaceutical equivalent of CDC) and other regulatory agencies, but NOT tested against any authentic (scientific) standard—not many know this. 

A chemical manufacturer should also manufacture drug products. Chemical manufacturing is purely mixing chemicals/molecules (often very simple molecules using simple processes). In that case, the products will be of higher quality and far cheaper than their “pharmaceutical” version—and with the science behind them.

In short, a direct from (chemical/medicine) manufacturers to consumers/patients may be practiced. It would be a superior approach, eliminating the involvement of others, especially those having no training and expertise in science/chemistry.  

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