"CURE-ALL" DRUGS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 55, 26 August 1911, Page 9

"CURE-ALL" DRUGS

CAMPAIGN IN AMERICA. That the Pure Foods and Drugs Act does not cover the false labelling of patent or proprietary medicines is the curious ruling made by the United States Supreme Court in a recent case. In other words, the Court found that while adulterated drugs or medicines came within the purview of the Act, those labelled with extravagantly untrue claims did not. Almost immediately after the promulgation of the decision President Taft directed to Congress a strongly worded message urging the instant passage of an amendment to the law to meet the case.

The manufacture of patent medicines is one of the biggest businesses in the country, so general is their use. Prior to the passage of the Pure Foods and Drugs Act of 1906, literally thousands of dangerous frauds were on the market advertised as sure cures for epilepsy, consumption and all lung diseases, kidney, liver and' malarial troubles, diabetes; in fact, cures for every known ill of the present day were offered for sale and palmed off on the ignorant. They were not only utterly useless in the treatment of the disease, but in many cases were positively dangerous, as the President points out in his message. Prior to the recent decision of the Supreme Court the officers charged with the enforcement of the law had succeeded in effectually putting a stop to false labelling. Many hundreds of pretended cures were withdrawn from th* market, and there is not a single patent medicine on the American market that was not enforced to at least change its labels, eliminating false and extravagant claims. Nearly one hundred criminal prosecutions against medicine makers were concluded in the Federal Courts by pleas of guilty and the imposition of fines. More than 100 cases of the same nature, involving "some of the rankest frauds by which the American people were ever deceived," as the President says, are now pending in the Courts. These must, however, be dismissed under the ruling of the Supreme Court. In asking Congress to take immediate steps to so amend the law as to make it effective, President Taft declares that in his opininion the sale of drugs under knowingly false claims as to their effect in disease constitutes an evil which menaces the general health of the people and strikes at the life of the nation.

One association of makers of drugs and beverages claims that it expends more than £2,000,000 annually in advertising. A well-known patent medicine manuacturer, now visiting San Francisco, says he has spent £1,500,000 in advertising his preparations. A circular sent to the press by an association of proprietary medicine makers stating that advertising will be diminished unless "vicious and uncalled for assaults on foods, beverages and drugs'' Dy the Government officials is stopped, is characterised by the New York Outlook as "the? frankest attempt we ever remember to have seen to bribe the American press to be silent about a matter which vitally concerns the well-being of every American hom«."