It is banned, but not officialy. It's grey therefore tainted hence the idea is you want to stay as clean as possible. So the R&F were supposed to get it, and stay away from grey issues. But, the R&F doesn't care about grey issues they just care about living or dying. Hence the problem it looks like they have a double standard when in reality in order to get the heat off on the BORG. They the said it is a grey issue Hence a personal choise. Thinking that the R&F would stay away from something sorta bad, and things continue as normal.
To put it simple, They tried tricking the everyone into thinking they OKed but put into word to trigger group think of the R&F into staying away from it anyway. Then it backfired in their face.