Phenylephrine doesn't work though. It never did. It was "pushed" as an alternative to pseudoephedrine which can be used to synthesize meth, but afaik every single study done on this shows that phenylephrine does absolutely nothing, it's a placebo drug. The faster it's phased out the better.
It was approved back in the 70s after there being some studies that showed it was somewhat effective against congestion. I suspect it was no better than a placebo, but once it gets over the hurdle of being shown to be safe to use it probably didn't take much to get it approved. I don't think it was ever a popular product until the government starting making pseudoephedrine, which is highly effective, hard to buy.
