Overview
Diet pills have historically referred to stimulants like amphetamines that can suppress appetites, though more recent classes of weight-loss drugs include GLP-1 agonists without the same risks of chemical dependencies.
History and Etymology
Around the 1930s, amidst the initial wave of manufacturing amphetamines, clinicians noticed that they suppressed appetites in their patients and began prescribing them for weight loss. By the 1960s, cocktails of amphetamines, barbiturates, laxatives, and diuretics (referred to as “Rainbow Pills”) flooded the market with minimal oversight. Some researchers argued that there was effectively an amphetamine epidemic from 1929 to 1971, with more outbreaks since; the number of amphetamine users with symptoms of substance use disorder doubled between 2002 and 2004. The Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs acted in 1971 to classify all amphetamine products as Schedule II drugs requiring prescriptions for each fill, which led to a 60% decrease in amphetamine prescriptions as clinicians struggled to see medical justifications for recommending it to their patients.