SSRIs and benzodiazepines are not comparable at all, nor a substitute, nor it needs to be that way. Question your government instead, as it's the one doing the banning because some people abuse it, while most of us DO ACTUALLY NEED IT. People are suffering at the expense of other people, because the Government can dictate what you can put or not put in your own body.

People abused and still abuse glue (inhalation), did we ban glue yet, for fuck's sake?

Why do people think prohibition works? Just look at all the awful consequences of such prohibition. In France, making codeine prescription-only (from OTC) led people to the use of heroin (illegally), which is far worse than codeine. In the US, you have the War on Drugs, which clearly has failed, there is a fuckton of crimes associated with it which would cease to exist if they were legal, and then the usual argument "but all people would be junkies" clearly don't apply, because both Portugal and The Netherlands are doing just fine, and Portugal got better off by decriminalizing drug use, as in, less drug-related injuries, reduced drug use, and so on. The evidence is all there, but the FDA and anyone who supports it just wants to grab on that sweet money from the Big Pharma, hence why Kratom was both claimed to be an opioid, AND possessing no medical value (contradictory), and at the same time they are trying to extract its alkaloids to patent it and make a medicine out of it, which of course just brings them millions of USD in the end. Thank your socialist FDA, and thank your authoritarian government for all the unnecessary suffering of individuals, who are suffering for the actions of some.

Or look at UK, I always laugh [not because I find the deaths of people humorous, but because whatever the Government is trying (?) to do, it backfires, ALWAYS] when I see articles of people being stabbed, I'm confused, I thought banning knives worked, apart from rising of such attacks and deaths. Interesting how that works, right? Prohibition has always failed. If you want to kill someone, you can just do it with a single punch to the throat (for which I have footage). What next? Are you going to ban showing fists? Which brings me back to City of Berkeley, where they banned rocks in a completely arbitrary zone, i.e. if you pick up a rock inside [or enter the zone with a rock in your hand] that arbitrary zone, you are committing a crime and you will be taken away somewhere more horrible, and in case you can't pay a fine, you might work it off, or sit in prison for a while, where you WILL change, and not for the better: for the worse. This is how our system works. Do you like it? If yes, you are part of the problem, and you lost the right to complain when it's your life, or your family's life on the line. Let's save us each other from double standards and affirmative actions. If no [you don't like how the Government operates, and so on], then DO SOMETHING!

Regarding the FDA, I've already posted these links under this post, and I do not intend to spam, but I think education and giving people self-awareness is a good thing, so here it goes:

1) https://tomwoods.com/ep-1124-death-by-regulation-the-truth-a...

2) https://tomwoods.com/ep-1196-a-market-alternative-to-the-fda...

3) https://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/10/business/exposing-the-fda...