The heart of this decision turns on a fine line in federal drug rules—does simply handing out samples count as selling drugs to a non-patient? A group of chiropractors, who received free medicine samples to give directly to their patients, said “no.” The FDA’s rule says drug distributors must register and meet certain safety steps if they sell to anyone other than the patient. But these clinics never bought or sold the drugs at all. They only received samples from drug companies.

music for the podcast provided by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Dimitry Taras