If drugs are harmful enough to stop when you're pregnant, what makes them less harmful when you're not?

How to cure the common cold:

"Without medicine it takes 7 days, with medicine it takes a week."
You've heard this classic punch-line about fighting the common cold, and there is truth in this statement.
When a child in America starts sniffling or sneezing, the first line of defense that most parents use is…
a jog to their medicine cabinet.

In 2004, over 3 million prescriptions for five drugs were prescribed to children without adequate studies being conducted on their safety and effectiveness. (Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research
Group)

The Food and Drug Administration was recently quoted as saying that the side effects of many cold medicines
are not usually serious, but that severe and deadly side-effects are not only possible, but are becoming more common everyday.

Prescription drug errors double a person's risk of dying in the hospital and cost an estimated $2 billion a year.
(Tim Friend, USA Today)

During a five year period in the late 1980's, more than 650,000 children had been reported as severely "ill" as
a direct result of taking over the counter drugs, so says the Center for Poison Control.

The most common drug given to sick children - antibiotics - is actually a suppressor to the immune system!
The Journal of American Medical Association found that Amoxicillin is not effective ... and ... concluded that
children who took the drug for chronic ear infections were 2-6 times more likely to have a recurrence of fluid
buildup.