Pure Food and Drug Act

Many laws have been enacted over the last century that affect drug distribution and administration. Those included here are the Pure Food and Drug Act Harrison Narcotic Act Pure Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act. These laws control the use of the three categories of drugs in the United States (prescription, nonprescription, and controlled substances). 

The Pure Food and Drug Act established the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

A revision of the Pure Food and Drug Act, the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, passed in 1938, added several provisions that impacted the food industry. Among those provisions were authorized factory inspections and the authority for court injunction to the previous seizure and prosecution actions (Janssen, 1992). Adulterated food was now defined as Sec. 402, A food shall be deemed to be adulterated if it consists in whole or in part of any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance, or if it is otherwise unfit for food, or if it has been prepared, packed or held under unsanitary conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health. The importance of the whereby clause is the concept that a food product need not be contaminated physically to be considered adulterated, but has been exposed to conditions that may have resulted in contamination of the food. This situation is vastly different from that which existed at the time the 1906 Food and Drug Act was passed. 

Chief chemist Harvey W. Wiley (called the "Crusading Chemist" and "Father of the Pure Food and Drugs Act") campaigns for a federal drug safety law. 

The Pure Food and Drug Act established the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which now oversees the manufacture and use of all foods, food additives, and drugs amendments (1938, 1958, and 1962) strengthened the law considerably. 

A landmark in the control of drugs was the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Food abuses, however, were the primary target. Less than one quarter of the hrst thousand decisions dealt with drugs, and of these, the majority were concerned with patent medicines. 

This new law, known as the Pure Foods and Drugs Act, prevented the importation of adulterated and spurious drugs and medicines, and required that all ingredients be identified on the drug label, thus ending the era of secret nostrums (6,7). 

Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 Prohibited mislabeling and adulteration of drugs. 

Amendment (1912) to the Pure Food and Drug Act Prohibited false or fraudulent advertising claims. 

By the 1930s, the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act had become obsolete. Much wrangling among legislators followed in the efforts to revise it, but an... 

The Pure Food and Drug Act prohibits interstate commerce in adulterated drugs but requires the government to prove a product is unsafe before removing it from the market. 

In U.S. v. Johnson, the Supreme Court rules that the Pure Food and Drug Act did not prohibit false claims about the benefits of a drug, only false claims about the ingredients. 

Theodore Roosevelt, Republican president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. Concerned about the impurity and misleading claims of patent medicines, he supported government efforts to improve the safety of drug use with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. The legislation represented a modest first step but was followed by stronger efforts in decades to follow. 

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