436  Editorial.  {  ■"■Ji,';'',','^": 
adopt  equivical  resolves.  The  people  have  spoken  by  Amendment 
and  Congressional  Enactment  and  their  mandates  must  be  obeyed 
alike  by  the  public  officers  (the  Government)  and  the  citizens  so  long 
as  these  remain  the  law  of  the  land. 
The  responsibilities  and  obligations  placed  upon  the  pharmacists 
by  the  Volstead  Act  are  certainly  no  greater  nor  more  of  a  hard- 
ship than  those  imposed  by  the  Harrison  Antinarcotic  Act.  We 
have  italicized  the  pharmacists  because  we  look  upon  these  acts  as 
recognizing  professional  pharmacy  and  that  the  dispensing  of  all 
medicines  should  be  by  the  licensed  pharmacists.  We  cannot 
doubt  that  Congress  considered  the  possibility  of  establishing 
dispensaries  for  the  distribution  of  alcoholic  liquors.  That  the 
conclusion  was  adverse  to  such  a  method  is  certain.  How  far  the 
results  of  the  experiments  with  State  dispensaries  and  the  grave  danger 
of  abuse  deterred  from  such  an  action  is  not  known.  However,  we  do 
not  hesitate  to  assert  that  under  the  provisions  of  the  Volstead  Act 
the  danger  of  illicit  distribution  of  liquors  will  be  lessened  con- 
tinuously and  that  eventually  their  legitimate  prescribing  and  dis- 
pensing as  medicines  only  will  be  assured. 
Let  the  pharmacists  appreciate  that  if  government  dispensaries 
are  necessary  for  the  proper  dispensing  of  prescriptions  calling 
for  whiskey  or  brandy  that  they  will  equally  be  necessary  for  the 
dispensing  of  prescriptions  calling  for  morphine  or  cocaine.  More- 
over, that  such  action  is  an  open  and  broad  aspersion  of  the  pro- 
fessional standing  of  pharmacists  and  their  right  to  demand  the 
respect  and  confidence  of  the  public  and  that  they  merit  responsibility 
reposed  in  their  professional  integrity  by  this  Law.  To  decline 
the  responsibility  imposed  upon  pharmacists  by  the  Enforcement 
Act,  could  not  be  considered  as  declining  ''the  honor"  but  as  shirking 
a  professional  responsibility.  The  discharge  of  a  duty  in  obedience 
with  the  law  would  appear  to  us  as  preserving  the  standard  of  phar- 
macy untarnished  and  far  more  so  than  a  captious  refusal  to  do  so 
under  the  misnomer  of  "declining  an  honor." 
After  all,  the  Mosaic  injunction  is  a  safe  and  worthy  advice  for 
the  pharmacists  to  follow: 
"According  to  the  sentence  of  the  law  which  they  shall  teach 
thee,  and  according  to  the  judgment  which  they  shall  tell  thee, 
thou  shalt  do;  thou  shalt  not  decline  from  the  sentence  which  they  ^ 
shall  shew  thee,  to  the  right  hand,  nor  to  the  left."    (Deut.  17:  12.) 
G.  M.  B. 
