The alpha vs beta is not really the heart of the story now, is it? So why tar-n-feather a very valid story with the 'clickbait' brush?
It is a story worth reading. And asking hard questions of the FDA.
My theory is rooted in 'follow the money'. No, not in that way! Big pharma gets held to a rigorous standard because a bigger chunk of change is at stake, for multiple players. The herbal-shmurble con-artists are simply too small a fish to matter in the multi-billion dollar game that is drug approval.
That's why I prefaced it with a warning that pedantry lay ahead!
I don't think it's clickbait, I think it's interesting for a wide variety of reasons - the unregulated supplements industry, novel stimulants (or potential stimulants, IIRC beta-methyl PEAs have not been that active compared to alpha-methyl ones) etc etc
>> The herbal-shmurble con-artists are simply too small a fish to matter in the multi-billion dollar game that is drug approval.
By selling as a dietary supplement rather than as a medicine they side-step pretty much everything. Supplements are a multi-billion dollar industry themselves. Every so often a politician will mention regulating them like medicine, usually in terms of making them prove their tenuous health claims, but it turns out there's a lot of money for lobbyists in their war-chest.
Last time I remember hearing about this was in Germany a few years back I think...
The key point is that amphetamines are a subset of of PEAs, and that BMPEA does not belong in that subset because it is a positional isomer of amphetamine- the methyl group is in the wrong place (yes, positions do matter in chemistry).
BMPEA is by definition not an amphetamine. Amphetamine is a contraction of Alpha-Methyl PHenEThylAMINE, BMPEA is beta-methyl.
But I guess saying 'Amphetamine' will get you more clicks than 'Phenethylamine', even though Phenethylamine is the wider class....