its not dissimilar to the kids buying the brightly coloured branded blends of NPS in spite of there being high quality “generic” deals of compounds readily available to anyone who merely put in a small bit of extra effort – and there wasn’t even that much money put behind marketing these brands, only the sales patter of those in headshops.
BTW the “pharma” originally worked in a place called an apothecary which was the shop or store for the chemicals – but eventually the name also got used for the job title. These places sold “patent medicines” (i.e branded mixtures with confidential contents), tobacco, sweets. and often any poison/hazardous chemical to anyone who would pay without asking too many questions about its intended use, although they also were supposed to give useful medical advice as well.
This led to such places being regulated, as early as the 1200s in the case of Germany and around 1600s in England…
Incidentally NL pharmacy supply stores still use the quasi medieval names of compounds which are a surreal mixture of German, Latin and bits of French to this day…
