The DEA and CSA only apply to controlled substances. Drugs today are categorized into five schedules.

Schedule 1- too dangerous to reasonably use; drug exists but you won’t find it in a pharmacy

Schedule 2-Adderall, Ritalin, Oxycodone, Hydrocodone, Morphine. These drugs must be locked up in a safe. An accounting of these drugs must be submitted to the board of pharmacy on demand.

Schedule 3-4 Controls, but not as addictive as schedule 2.

Schedule 5- any none controlled medication. Unlikely to cause addiction.

With the exception of a short-lived vaccine law there was little to no regulation before the FDA.

The FDA while not called so until the 1930s was initially created in 1906 by the Pure Food and Drug Act.

It would not be until 1938, though when FDA would gain any real teeth.

You see before this time compounding in pharmacies was common. Pharmacists often had their own private recipes that they would make. These recipes were not standardized so you would go to one pharmacy and get an active ingredient of 80%, the next pharmacy would sell the “same” drug but the active ingredient was “95%”

Nowadays, there’s is a law that standardized medicine’s active ingredients but some companies saw an opportunity to begin marketing that if you bought their product, you would know just how much active ingredient you were getting, regardless of what pharmacy you went to.

One such company was SE Massengill, who sold a drug similar to Bactrim (Sulfa antibiotic). It was preserved with antifreeze and killed 100 people, usually through acute kidney failure.

This caused in 1938, for Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to be passed which would setup the FDA that we are familiar with today.

These are some of the laws prior to the CSA but before then controls were not limited in the way they are today.