Message to the Congress Concerning the Pure Food and Drugs Act

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

Your attention is respectfully called to the necessity of passing at this session an amendment to the food and drugs act of June 30, 1906 (34 Stat., 768), which will supplement existing law and prevent the shipment in interstate and foreign commerce and the manufacture and sale within the Territories and the District of Columbia of worthless nostrums labeled with misstatements of fact as to their physiological action—misstatements false and misleading even in the knowledge of those who make them.

On June 30, 1906, after an agitation of 20 years, the food and drugs act, passed by the Fifty-ninth Congress, received the approval of the President and became law. The purpose of the measure was twofold—first, to prevent the adulteration of foods and drugs within the jurisdiction of the Federal Government; and, second, to prevent any false labeling of foods and drugs that will deceive the people into the belief that they are securing other than that for which they ask and which they hare the right to get The law was received with general satisfaction and has been vigorously enforced. More than 2,000 cases hare been prepared for criminal prosecution against the shippers of adulterated or misbranded foods and drugs, and seizures hare been made of more than 700 shipments of such articles. More than two-thirds of these cases have been begun since March 4, 1909. Of the criminal cases more than 800 have terminated favorably to the Government, and of the shipments seized more than 450 have been condemned and either relabeled or destroyed. In every case in which the food seized was deleterious to health it was destroyed. A large number of cases are now pending.

The Supreme Court has held in a recent decision (United States v. O. A. Johnson, opinion May 29, 1911) that the food and drugs act does not cover the knowingly false labeling of nostrums as to curative effect or physiological action, and that inquiry under this salutary statute does not by its terms extend in any case to the inefficacy of medicines to work the cures claimed for them on the labels. It follows that, without fear of punishment under the law, unscrupulous persons, knowing the medicines to have no curative or remedial value for the diseases for which they indicate them, may ship in interstate commerce medicines composed of substances possessing any slight physiological action and labeled as cures for diseases which, in the present state of science, are recognized as incurable.

An evil which menaces the general health of the people strikes at the life of the Nation. In my opinion, the sale of dangerously adulterated drugs, or the sale of drugs under knowingly false claims as to their effect in disease, constitutes such an evil and warrants me in calling the matter to the attention of the Congress.

Fraudulent misrepresentations of the curative value of nostrums not only operate to defraud purchasers, but are a distinct menace to the public health. There are none so credulous as sufferers from disease. The need is urgent for legislation which will prevent the raising of false hopes of speedy cures of serious ailments by misstatements of fact as to worthless mixtures on which the sick will rely while their diseases progress unchecked.

At the time the food and drugs act was passed there were current in commerce literally thousands of dangerous frauds labeled as cures for every case of epilepsy, sure cures for consumption and all lung diseases, cures for all kidney, liver, and malarial troubles, cures for diabetes, cures for tumor and cancer, cures for all forms of heart disease; In fact, cures for all the ills known at the present day. The labels of many of these so-called cures indicated their use for diseases of children. They were not only utterly useless in the treatment of the disease, but in many cases were positively injurious. If a tithe of these statements had been true, no one with access to the remedies which bore them need have died from any cause other than accident or old age. Unfortunately, the statements were not true. The shameful fact is that those who deal in such preparations know they are deceiving credulous and ignorant unfortunates who suffer from some of the gravest ills to which the flesh of this day is subject No physician of standing in his profession, no matter to what school of medicine he may belong, entertains the slightest idea that any of these preparations will work the wonders promised on the labels.

Prior to the recent decision of the Supreme Court the officers charged with the enforcement of the law regarded false and misleading statements concerning the curative value of nostrums as misbranding, and there was a general acquiescence in this view by the proprietors of the nostrums. Many pretended cures, in consequence, were withdrawn from the market, and the proprietors of many other alleged cures eliminated false and extravagant claims from their labels, either voluntarily or under the compulsion of criminal prosecution. Nearly 100 criminal prosecutions on this charge were concluded in the Federal courts by pleas of guilty and the imposition of fines. More than 150 cases of the same nature, involving some of the rankest frauds by which the American people were ever deceived, are pending now, and must be dismissed.

I fear, if no remedial legislation be granted at this session, that the good which has already been accomplished in regard to these nostrums will be undone, and the people of the country will be deprived of a powerful safeguard against dangerous fraud. Of course, as pointed out by the Supreme Court, any attempt to legislate against mere expressions of opinion would be abortive; nevertheless, if knowingly false misstatements of fact as to the effect of the preparations be provided against, the greater part of the evil will be subject to control.

The statute can be easily amended to include the evil I have described. I recommend that this be done at once as a matter of emergency.

WM H TAFT

THE WHITE HOUSE, June 20, 1911.