Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906

Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906

The 1906 Federal Food and Drugs law established the agency that would become FDA. At the time it only focused on issues of fraud, not safety. It prohibited the use of false or misleading labeling (cracking down particularly hard on medications containing unlisted amounts of heroin, cocaine, cannabis, morphine, alcohol, and caffeine), but did not ban misleading advertising, leaving companies to make all kinds of outrageous claims in their radio, newspaper, and magazine ads, as long as their labels were devoid of such assertions. The agency could only prohibit foodstuffs that were injurious to health if they contained poisons, and the industry did not have to reveal a product’s formula on its label. But the 1906 Food and Drug Act did set some key precedents, namely establishing the government’s regulatory function over food and medicine (cosmetics were not included under the FDA’s purview at this time).

Cry Wolf Quotes

If the Federal Government should regulate Inter-state traffic in drugs on the basis of their therapeutic value, why not regulate traffic in theology, by excluding from transportation, all theological books which Dr. Wiley and his assistants, upon the examination, should find to be misleading in any particular?

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The Proprietary Association 23rd annual report.

[Government intervention would mean dealing with] a pestilential lot of spies, meddlers, and informers. The Federal Government was not created for the purpose of cutting your toe nails or corns. I believe there are millions of old women, white and black, who know more about good victuals and good eating than my friend Doctor Wiley and all his apothecary shop.

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Representative William Adamson (D-GA)