No market pressures were affecting adulteration of food or tobacco until governments started acting. Post war the vast majority of adults smoked thanks to US marketing led campaigns to promote wider adoption, and their "torches of freedom" campaign to get adoption started among females. Nor was lead in any way declining, quite the contrary it was constantly increasing as car use spread. Asbestos was being used profligately until regulation came in. Thalidomide was outlawed in developed nations, yet those multi nationals quite happily sell it to the developing world, off script. There is no evidence for their being on the side of the public interest whatsoever, yet countless, endless examples of their working against, from disinformation campaigns on smoking, fire retardants, DDT, lead in fuel, Bhopal, enough to fill a book. Capitalism needs, absolutely needs constraining.

If governments today do not work for us, as they did in the fifties, sixties and seventies, it is because they have been mainly captured by the cult of neoliberalism and small laissez-faire hands of governance, and the libertarian think tanks and lobbyists, such that even the "left" is right leaning...