368 
Editorial. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
(        July,  1S93. 
The  act  has  been  vetoed  by  Governor  Pattison,  June  19,  and  it  will  be  of 
interest  to  place  on  record  the  reasons  for  the  disapproval  of  a  law  which  deals 
with  an  important  subject,  that  has  nowhere  been  solved  to  the  satisfaction  of 
all  concerned,  leaving  out  of  consideration  the  parties  who  practise  and  derive 
pecuniary  profit  from  adulteration.    The  Governor  states  : 
"This  is  a  most  elaborate,  far-reaching  and  radical  act.  Possibly,  upon 
the  whole,  its  purposes  are  good  and  in  the  interest  of  public  health  and  sani- 
tation. But  new  and  radical  attempts,  such  as  this,  to  interfere  with  the 
domestic  life  and  private  affairs  of  the  people  should  always  be  hedged  about 
with  ample  safeguards  and  protection  against  the  needless  invasion  of  popular 
rights.  Official  inspection  of  every  article  of  food  or  drink  by  man  is  such  an 
attempt  to  regulate  and  control  business  and  domestic  life  and  to  interfere  with 
the  rights  of  the  citizen,  that  it  must  be  carefully  scrutinized,  lest  it  not  only 
work  immediate  oppression  and  wrong,  but  promote  duplicity,  encourage  fraud 
and  evoke  such  resistance  as  would  effectually  defeat  all  its  sanitary  purposes. 
"  Besides  many  other  things,  this  bill  enacts  that  there  shall  be  no  genuine 
beer  except  it  be  made  '  from  barley  and  hops,'  and  that  'all  substitutes  shall 
be  considered  adulterations,  and  be  under  the  penalty  of  the  law,  even  if  not 
deleterious  to  health.'  Why  one  class  of  the  manufacturers  of  drink  should 
have  specified  to  them  by  the  Legislature  the  particular  ingredients  of  their 
product,  and  should  be  confined  to  them  under  the  penalty  of  the  law,  even  if 
some  other  ingredients  may  be  'not  deleterious  to  health,' it  is  impossible  to 
conceive  upon  any  honest  theory  which  should  control  or  construe  public  leg- 
islation. 
"The  enactment  in  one  line  of  this  bill,  that  all  substitutes  for  barley  and 
hops  shall  be  under  the  penalty  of  the  law,  and  in  the  next  line  that  beer,  if 
made  of  other  ingredients  not  noxious  to  health,  shall  be  so  labelled,  seem  to 
be  wholly  inconsistent.  Moreover,  no  legislation  of  this  character  can  affect 
or  regulate  the  inter-State  traffic  in  beer,  the  product  of  breweries  situated  out- 
side of  our  Commonwealth,  and  such  ruthless  discrimination  against  a  large 
class  of  our  own  manufacturers  seems  to  have  been  short-sighted  and  ill- 
considered. 
"  vSection  9  of  the  Act  of  May  24,  1887,  to  regulate  pharmacy,  amended  by 
the  act  of  June  10,  189 1,  provides  against  the  falsification  or  adulteration  of 
drugs  or  medical  substances,  and  the  attempt  to  repeal  it  by  Section  14  of  the 
bill  under  consideration  would,  in  all  probability,  work  evil  and  confusion.  I 
believe  that  something  may  be  done  in  a  general  way  towards  the  prevention 
of  adulteration  and  imposition  in  articles  of  food  and  drink,  but  such  legis- 
lation must  be  undertaken  with  great  caution.  It  should  be  the  subject  of 
careful  study  by  the  regularly-constituted  health  authorities  of  the  State,  and 
ought  to  have  their  approval  before  submission  to  the  Legislature.  • 
"I  am  satisfied  the  bill  before  me  is  not  only  not  such  a  measure  as 
would  recommend  itself  to  popular  approval  and  secure  the  moral  support 
which  all  sound  laws  should  be  able  to  gather  to  themselves,  but  that,  in  the 
main,  it  would  work  far  more  harm  than  good.  The  people  of  the  Common- 
wealth can  better  afford  to  wait  for  the  enactment  of  a  more  carefully  drawn 
law  than  to  submit  to  the  evils  which  would  attend  the  enforcement  of  this 
one." 
