Drug Bill Out

High on the list of things the New Deal proposed to do soon after March 4, 1933 was a vigorous clean-up of the food and drug industry. Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt became an ardent advocate for a sterner and stricter law than the relic of 1906. In the Department of Agriculture Brain Truster Rexford Guy Tugwell drafted such a stringent bill to revamp the old Federal Food & Drugs Act that manufacturers who stock the shelves of drug stores and groceries were thrown into a political panic. Hearings were held at the Capitol and self-righteous witnesses on both sides of the issue beat their breasts and shouted their convictions. But up to this week nothing really happened because Congress was too busy washing other dirty linen.

Last week brought the first real signs of action by the Administration on a new food & drug law. The Senate Commerce Committee reported out a bill which was much less than Dr. Tugwell and Mrs. Roosevelt had originally planned, but much more than the makers and merchandisers of Ovaltine, Listerine, Ex-Lax, Sal Hepatica, Vicks, Fleischmann's Yeast, Aspirin, Pepsodent, Danderine, Vitalis, et al. cared to accept voluntarily. And President Roosevelt prodded Congress on to action with a special message.

In substance the new Senate proposals require that the labels on packages of foods, drugs and cosmetics must state the names of all active ingredients, the use of alcohol as an ingredient, and a warning against any habit-forming ingredient. For all such goods, except fresh fruits and vegetables, the Secretary of Agriculture may establish standards of identity and quality. Forbidden are false statements about goods, with the burden of proof on the manufacturer, packer, distributor and seller rather than on the buyer.

Because the distinction between false advertising and legitimate puffing of one's wares is often apt to be fine, two paragraphs of the proposed law last week caused close trade scrutiny. They were:

"(a) An advertisment of a food, drug, or cosmetic shall be deemed to be false if it is false or misleading in any particular relevant to the purposes of this act. Any representation concerning any effect of a drug shall be deemed to be false under this paragraph if such representation is not sustained by demonstrable scientific facts or substantial and reliable medical opinion.

"(b) For the purposes of this act the advertisement of a drug representing it to have any therapeutic effect in the treatment of Bright's disease, cancer, tuberculosis, poliomyelitis, venereal diseases, heart and vascular diseases, shall be deemed to be false; except that no advertisement shall be deemed to be false if it is disseminated only to members of the medical and pharmaceutical professions or appears only in the scientific periodicals of these professions. . . ."

Declared President Roosevelt in his special message to Congress: "No honest enterpriser need fear that because of the passage of such a measure he will be unfairly treated. He would be asked to do no more than he now holds himself out to do. It would merely make certain that those who are less scrupulous than I know most of our producers to be, cannot force their more honest competitors into dishonorable ways.

"The great majority of those engaged in the trade in food and drugs do not need regulation. They observe the spirit as well as the letter of existing law. Pres-ent legislation ought to be directed primarily toward a small minority of evaders and chiselers. At the same time even-handed regulation will not only outlaw the bad practices of the few, but will also protect the many from unscrupulous competition. It will, besides, provide a bulwark of consumer confidence throughout the business."

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