Am.  jour.  Pharm. )      Decision  on  Tincture  of  Ginger.  5 
January,  1921.  J 
and  more  to  the  interest  of  all  concerned  if  Congress  had  been 
frankly  advised  that  this  section  of  the  Act  was  impracticable, 
inimical  to  health  and  public  welfare  and  destructive  of  an  essential 
industry  in  which  alcohol  was  the  most  important  raw  material? 
The  relief  that  is  needed  from  the  entangling  and  contradictory 
language  can  be  afforded  only  by  the  law-making  body  and  these 
forces  should  be  united  in  urging  upon  Congress  the  necessity  for 
a  clarifying  amendment  that  will  permit  the  drug  trade  to  carry 
on  its  legitimate  manufacture  and  dispensing  of  medicines  and 
the  further  development  and  progress  of  such  an  essential  industry. 
At  the  hearings  held  in  Washington  in  December,  1919,  it  was 
at  once  apparent  that  the  officials  of  the  prohibition  enforcement 
division  assumed  that,  by  virtue  of  the  authority  given  in  Section  1 
(7)  of  the  Volstead  Act  to  the  Commissioner  of  Internal  Revenue 
to  prescribe  regulations  for  carrying  out  the  provisions  of  this 
Act,  they  were  empowered  to  determine  what  formulas  of  the 
United  States  Pharmocopceia,  National  Formulary  or  the  American 
Institute  of  Homoeopathy  are  fit  for  beverage  purposes.  The  indict- 
ment of  the  eighteen  official  formulas  subsequently  listed  in  Regu- 
lations 60,  Article  XI,  Sec.  60,  was  then  foreshadowed.  The 
medical  and  pharmaceutical  professions  were  unexpectedly  con- 
fronted by  a  new  proposition  by  which  the  authority  of  these  legally 
adopted  works  was  to  be  questioned.  Standard  formulas  con- 
stantly prescribed  as  remedial  agents  or  as  vehicles  for  medicines 
could,  on  the  opinion  of  an  official  who  might  be  but  temporarily 
in  office  and  without  any  special  knowledge  of  the  subject,  be  de- 
clared as  fit  for  beverage  purposes.  That  the  fitness  of  a  prepara- 
tion for  perversion  to  improper  use  and  not  such  improper  use 
was  to  determine  the  possibility  of  its  continued  use  as  a  medicine. 
Some  of  the  formulas  so  listed  had  never  been  viewed  by  the  drug 
trade  as  possible  tipples.  The  department  realized  that  many  of 
the  formulas  so  listed  were  essential  to  the  present  methods  of 
medical  practice  and  so  the  officials  assumed  that  they  not  only  had 
the  power  to  declare  these  as  coming  within  the  meaning  of  Section 
4  as  "not  unfit  for  beverage  purposes,"  but  that  they  likewise  had 
authority  to  declare  that  their  manufacture  could  be  undertaken 
