People still buy them too like it's actually needed for their animal sadly, I think they should be more educated on them though,
And yeah I hear you there, the heat mat thing is crazy. It's probably made like that for reptiles that like a lot more higher heating levels, although I wouldn't really know because most of those reptiles like to bask under heat lamps anyways. Probably sometime in the future there will be more reasonable products for reptiles that are safer.