You could make the converse statement about thalidomide, which USA avoided while others suffered severe problems. Regulation isn’t a silver bullet, and it’s particularly challenging to regulate AI because bits flow faster than atoms
There's also the opioid epidemic and amphetamine epidemic. They're pretty hard to justify in my opinion. Not that other countries don't have issues, but it's less common in democracies that that these things are pushed onto people by the govt through lobbying.
I live in a city with defacto legal drugs (including up to cocaine, crack and meth, but admittedly no opoids except hydrocodone) and there's no societal collapse nor any epidemic to be seen.
The opioid and amphetamine problems are due to drug relations in the US. It would have been better to not prohibit drugs. We are finally starting to see the rollback for marijuana. The amount of damage to civil liberties and lives lost to the drug war should be exhibit A in any argument about regulation.
DDT wasn’t banned for harming humans. Actually banning it was probably bad for humans overall because of the rise in malaria (but we opted to make that trade off for environmental reasons). You should probably pick a better example.
> DDT is classified as "moderately toxic" by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) and "moderately hazardous" by WHO
> "research has shown that exposure to DDT at amounts that would be needed in malaria control might cause preterm birth and early weaning ... toxicological evidence shows endocrine-disrupting properties; human data also indicate possible disruption in semen quality, menstruation, gestational length, and duration of lactation"
Now the question is: what are they neutering/cultivating.
It might very well end in a "why did we start putting lead in gas again?" / "we can spray kids with DDT clouds right?" x100 moment