Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
August,1909. 
National  Food  and  Drugs  Act. 
363 
out  of  the  limits  of  the  United  States.  If  they  are  merely  mis- 
branded,  the  importers  are  required  to  relabel  them  correctly. 
Hundreds  of  shipments  of  drugs  either  have  been  denied  entry  into 
the  United  States  or  have  been  relabelled  before  admission.  Some 
of  the  worst  classes  of  importations  of  drugs  have  ceased  altogether 
since  the  law  has  been  in  effect. 
To  the  retail  druggist,  this  work  may  seem  commendable  but 
on  the  whole  very  remote  from  him.  This  is  not  the  fact.  In 
this  examination  at  ports  of  entry  by  expert  United  States  officials 
lies  a  great  protection  for  the  retail  druggist.  All  of  you  pharma- 
cists are  under  State  pharmacy  laws  which  hold  you  responsible  for 
the  purity  of  the  drugs  you  sell.  Theoretically  you  are  supposed 
to  ascertain  the  quality  of  every  article  that  you  dispense.  Prac- 
tically, it  is  possible  for  you  to  do  this  only  in  a  small  minority  of 
cases.  Your  only  safety  lies  in  having  the  determination  of  purity 
made  prior  to  the  time  the  articles  come  into  your  hands.  Before 
the  national  law  was  enacted  you  had  no  such  protection,  and  you 
know  you  could  not  then  rely  upon  either  the  genuineness  or  the 
purity  and  quality  of  the  drugs  used  by  the  manufacturer.  Even 
when  the  drugs  were  good,  in  many  cases,  the  manufacture  of  the 
preparations  was  not  so  conducted  as  to  insure  reliability. 
It  is  not  meant  even  to  intimate  that  this  work  of  port  inspec- 
tion of  crude  drugs  is  complete.  It  has  been  begun  only,  and  some 
salutary  results  have  come  already ;  yet,  as  the  work  is  perfected, 
the  ultimate  results  will  far  exceed  those  now  apparent.  The  rea- 
sons why  greater  progress  has  not  been  made  are  many.  The  first 
step  was  the  collection  and  examination  of  crude  drugs  in  this 
country  and  abroad.  The  examination  of  these  samples  furnished  a 
basis  of  information  for  further  procedure,  but  it  took  time  for  this 
information  and  the  instructions  for  guidance  of  the  drug  collectors 
to  reach  all  parts  of  the  world.  This  preliminary  work  has,  how- 
ever, been  largely  completed,  and  the  effect  of  the  work  done  is 
shown  in  the  drugs  being  offered  for  entry,  in  which  there  is  an 
unmistakable  change  for  the  better. 
The  pure  food  law  has  now  been  in  operation  for  about  two 
years  and  a  half,  and,  while  the  law  was  passed  primarily  for  the 
protection  of  the  consumer,  it  is  legitimate  to  ask  in  what  way  it 
has  been  of  service  to  the  wholesale  as  well  as  the  retail  druggist. 
One  phase  of  the  question,  and  by  no  means  the  least,  is  a  moral 
one.    Before  the  Act  was  passed,  there  was  no  restraint  on  the 
