That example is not a placebo. It's the opposite of a placebo. A placebo is supposed to be the control. The baseline "truth" in a hypothesis. The entire idea of the placebo effect is that the individual's own psychology — their expectation of an effect — induces a physiological response, which pollutes the baseline hypothesis and all test data. Thus, the entire purpose of a double blind is to negate that bias from impacting the researcher, or the rat being studied.

That is fucking stupid when studying pretty much any drug people bother to take recreationally. They take them recreationally because they have an acutely noticeable effect. Unless you're a virgin amish person or child, you're gonna know when you're drunk or high; MDMA, LSD, or Psilocybin are on a whole other level, especially at the doses taken for psychiatric treatment. A placebo would only make sense if you were testing micro-doses that are so low they're widely considered to be imperceptible.

So no. The "gold standard" is wholly insufficient to adequately study drugs that induce a significant psychological response. These drugs need to be analyzed by people who hold a greater understanding of their effects, and our perception of reality, than bureaucrats who have zero experience with what they're studying. The only thing worse than a pseudo double blind would be rejecting significant drugs because they don't fit into our existing ape-like understanding of reality (or capitalism), resigning to "computer says no", and preventing millions of people from receiving an improvement in their quality of life; ignorance, stupidity, and maliciousness can cause the same level of damage.