We had a free market for drugs. So free and freely abused that it gave birth to modern journalism (muckraking) and the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. For good reasons few yearn to return to those truly free times.
Thanks for the links - that's interesting to consider when weighing the tradeoffs of an FDA-less country. Of course, the FDA is only one part of the story, and conceding a need for its general existence in no way means that its current purview and methodologies don't need extensive revision.
In any case, my post above was about what is (and what to properly call it), not what ought to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act
https://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h917.html