Tuesday, 5 April 2011

THE PHARMACOPEIA AS A LEGAL STANDARD

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http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/LI/24/2020.extract

Read in the Section on Pharmacology and Therapeutics of the American Medical Association, at the Fifty-ninth Annual Session, held at Chicago, June, 1908. ...

excerpt

Many years before the publication of the first edition of the United States Pharmacopeia it was recognized by the leaders of the medical and pharmaceutical professions that standards for potent well-known drugs were highly desirable, if not absolutely necessary for the proper treatment of human ailments. Tangible evidence of this feeling was manifested by the publication of a number of books by various authors which contained standards or descriptions of drug products of much value. The first edition of the Pharmacopeia appeared in 1820 and was immediately voluntarily accepted as the proper guide by both professions. Successive editions appeared decennially; and Congress in 1848 recognized this authority as the legal standard for drugs imported into the United States in the following language:

If, on examination, any drugs, medicines, medicinal preparations, whether chemical or otherwise, including medicinal essential oils, are found, in the opinion of the examiner, to be so far
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Sunday, 3 April 2011

Harvey Wiley's 1906 U.S. Food & Drugs Act Key Points

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Wiley is now made chief inspector, chief examiner, instigator of the charge, prosecutor, jury and judge; and if any manufacturer dares cry out against such an unjust condition he is met with the cry from Wiley and the Wiley press: "He is an adulteror and a dopester..." And all this power in the hands of a man who says: "I am the spirit and essence of the pure food and drug law, and without me there would be no law." - The American Food Journal, February 15, 1912, cited at p 109 of For God, Country and Coca Cola by Mark Pendergrast

SEC. 4

That the examinations of specimens of foods and drugs shall be made in the Bureau of chemistry of the Department of Agriculture, or under the direction and supervision of such Bureau, for the purpose of determining from such examinations whether such articles are adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of this Act; and if it shall appear from any such examination that any of such specimens is adulterated or misbranded within the meaning of this act, the Secretary of Agriculture shall cause notice thereof to be given to the party from whom such sample was obtained. Any party so notified shall be given an opportunity to be heard, under such rules and regulations as may be prescribed as aforesaid, and if it appears that any of the provisions of this act have been violated by such party, then the Secretary of Agriculture shall at once certify the facts to the proper United States district attorney, with a copy of the results of the analysis or the examination of such article duly authenticated by the analyst or officer making such examination, under the oath of such officer. After judgment of the court, notice shall be given by publication in such manner as may be prescribed by the rules and regulations aforesaid.

[IOW who ever was in Wiley's position as Chief Chemist at the US Department of Agriculture could declare a substance "bad" and thus ban it from interstate commerce]

SEC.6

That the term “drug,” as used in this Act, shall include all medicines and preparations recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary for internal or external use, and any substance or mixture of substances intended to be used for the cure, mitigation, or prevention of disease of either man or other animals. The term “food,” as used herein, shall include all articles used for food, drink, confectionery, or condiment by man or other animals, whether simple, mixed, or compound.

[IOW "drugs" excluding Tobacco, since it was dropped from the USP in 1905- a mere one year earlier as if perhaps in anticipation of the 1906 Act; and "foods" which would technically exclude Tobacco as the plant matter is considered too toxic to actually swallow]


SEC. 7

That for the purposes of this Act an article shall be deemed to be adulterated:

In case of drugs:

First. If, when a drug is sold under or by a name recognized in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National formulary, it differs from the standard of strength, quality, or purity, as determined by the test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary official at the time of investigation: Provided, That no drug defined in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary shall be deemed to be adulterated under this provision if the standard of strength, quality, or purity be plainly stated upon the bottle, box, or other container thereof although the standard may differ from that determined by the test laid down in the United States Pharmacopoeia or National Formulary.

Second. If its strength or purity fall below the professed standard or quality under which it is sold.

In the case of confectionery:

If it contains terra alba, barites, talc, chrome yellow, or other mineral substance or poisonous color or flavor, or other ingredient deleterious or detrimental to health, or any vinous, malt or spirituous liquor or compound or narcotic drug.

[IOW- anything containing what the USDA wished to supress, without of course any backing science]

In the case of food:

First. If any substance has been mixed and packed with it so as to reduce or lower or injuriously affect its quality or strength.

Second. If any substance has been substituted wholly or in part for the article.

Fifth. If it contain any added poisonous or other added deleterious ingredient which may render such article injurious to health: Provided, That when in the preparation of food products for shipment they are preserved by any external application applied in such manner that the preservative is necessarily removed mechanically, or by maceration in water, or otherwise, and directions for the removal of said preservative shall be printed on the covering or the package, the provisions of this act shall be construed as applying only when said products are ready for consumption.

[IOW- anything containing what the USDA wished to supress, without of course any backing science]

SEC. 8

That the term “misbranded,” as used herein, shall apply to all drugs, or articles of food, or articles which enter into the composition of food, the package or label of which shall bear any statement, design, or device regarding such article, or the ingredients or substances contained therein which shall be false or misleading in any particular, and to any food or drug product which is falsely branded as the State, territory, or country in which it is manufactured or produced.

That for the purposes of this Act an article shall also be deemed to be misbranded:

In the case of Drugs:

First. If it be an imitation of or offered for sale under the name of another article.

Second. If the contents of the package as originally put up shall have been removed, in whole or in part, and other contents shall have been placed in such package, or if the package fail to bear a statement on the label of the quantity or proportion of any alcohol, morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, alpha or beta eucaine, chloroform, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or acetanilide, or any derivative or preparation of any such substances contained therein

In the case of food:

First. If it be an imitation of or offered for sale under the distinctive name of another article.

Second. If it be labeled or branded so as to deceive or mislead the purchaser, or purport to be a foreign product when not so, or if the contents of the package as originally put up shall have been removed in whole or in part and other contents shall have been placed in such package, or if it fail to bear a statement on the label of the quantity or proportion of any morphine, opium, cocaine, heroin, alpha or beta eucaine, chloroform, cannabis indica, chloral hydrate, or acetanilide, or any derivative or preparation of any such substances contained therein.


[IOW- anything containing what the USDA wished to supress, without of course any backing science- thereby allowing the USDA to serve its first and foremost role as a protector of U.S. domestic agriculture, thereby allowing them to demonifiy say "cocaine" while ignoring/protecting "caffeine" and "nicotine" - AGRICULTURAL MERCANTILISM]
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Harvey Washington Wiley Paradox

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No explaination why Wiley, who served as the USDA Chief Chemist from 1883-1912, who admitted in 1922 that he recognized Tobacco's deleterious qualities within his first month of smoking at an unspecified time in the past, had fought so hard for a 1906 U.S. Food and Drug Act granting him the power to declare substances dangerous or deleterious to human health, yet limited to substances contained in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, from which Tobacco had been conveniently deleted one year earlier in 1905.

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/protect-growing-youth-against-habit.html

What does tobacco do to us? There is in it a poison called nicotine so deadly that one full drop of it would kill an adult. A smaller portion of it taken for the first time by a boy makes him deathly sick. That gives warning of its poisonous character, but doesn't usually wean him from the folly. It did not in my case, for I speak as an ex-smoker. I quit at the end of my first week, after.

I had got over the nausea and had begun to enjoy "a good cigar." But I had already discovered that tobacco would hobble my brain and lead others to follow my bad example. Tobacco of any kind puts a soft-pedal on efficiency of mind and body. It puts us in a state of narcosis. We are half chloroformed.


http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/history/about-harvey-wiley

It's a sweet story: Honey turned Harvey Wiley, M.D., the Institute's longtime Director of Food, Sanitation, and Health, into a passionate consumer advocate. Born in 1844, Wiley fought in the Civil War, went to medical school, then taught chemistry. In 1878, fiddling with a polariscope, a device for measuring stress in glass, Wiley examined various transparent foods and was shocked to learn that what companies were passing off as pure honey was mainly glucose. Thus began his lifelong campaign against mislabeled and dangerous products. He spent 29 years as the chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, where he fought for the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act. At GH from 1912 to 1930, he alerted readers to food frauds such as the treatment of spoiled vegetables with chemicals to "revive" them. In 1911, Wiley sued Coca-Cola for failing to label the soda as containing habit-forming caffeine. He lost the headline-making case, but it paved the way for future truth-in-labeling laws.

Read more: Dr. Harvey Wiley Original Doctor at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute - Good Housekeeping


http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/product-testing/history/good-housekeeping-research-institute-timeline

1916: We begin speaking out against the dangers of smoking and the effect advertising has in recruiting new smokers. "Unfortunately, there are many subtle ways of encouraging young men to smoke," writes Dr. Wiley. "Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent every year in telling the readers of periodicals of the merits of this, that, and the other brand of tobacco."

1921: Dr. Wiley links tobacco use to heart disease, noting that men smoke more and so suffer more heart disease than women. Seven years later, he warns women that use of tobacco is a cause of mouth, tongue, and throat cancer, more than 30 years before the U.S. Surgeon General officially acknowledges the connection.

1952: When European studies confirm that smoking causes cancer, GH bans cigarette advertising in the magazine — 12 years before the U.S. Surgeon General's pivotal report on the health hazards of tobacco, and 18 years before the Surgeon General's warning appears on cigarette packs. In 1978, GH's early antismoking efforts are commended by the American Cancer Society.

Read more: Good Housekeeping Research Institute Timeline – History of Consumer Advocacy - Good Housekeeping
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Saturday, 2 April 2011

The Cigarette and the Boy

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http://www.barefootsworld.net/aacharles_towns.html

UNDER THE DIRECTION OF

CHARLES B. TOWNS

The Cigarette and the Boy

http://books.google.com/books?id=QSigAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA524&lpg=PA523&ots=6EHPzYlvU_&dq=harvey+Wiley+Tobacco+cigarettes+Good+Housekeeping&output=text#c_top

Frederick L. Hoffman, in his scholarly work, which has just been published by the Prudential Press, The Mortality from Cancer Thruout the World, writes: 'The relation of smoking to cancer of the buccal cavity is apparently so well established as not to admit of even a question of doubt.' Much has been written on this phase of the problem of late, but if physicians think that the fact that the short-stemmed clay pipe causes cancer of the lip is the chief evil of the smoking habit, they take a short-sighted view of the situation.

I am convinced that the use of tobacco, chiefly in the form of the eternal cigarette, is responsible for the undoing of seventy-five per cent of the boys who go wrong. Few boys wait until they are mature and their resistance is at its maximum before they begin puffing. It would be remarkable if they did wait, for their fathers and older brothers are constantly blowing smoke into their faces. Even where constrictive laws exist, minors find no difficulty in obtaining cigarettes, so that children of the age that is most easily harmed by the use of tobacco now habitually indulge in its most harmful form. A father who drinks may attempt to conceal his indulgence from his family, but a father who smokes pollutes his home with little publicity.

There is another unfortunate effect of the use of tobacco by boys. When they begin to smoke, they do so against the wishes and often against the orders of their parents. This means broken discipline and deception. The boy who endeavors to hide the fact that lie smokes is started along a path that is even more harmful than tobacco. He has to invent excuses for being absent from home, and to explain away the odor of tobacco that is sure to cling to him; and when a boy begins to lie about these things, he will lie about others. So far as truth goes, the bars are down. Furthermore, he has to spend more money. Unless he is one of those unfortunate youths who are not held to a moderate weekly allowance, too often he will resort to dishonest means to obtain the money to satisfy his newly acquired taste.

And that is not all. Boys who spend their time in smoking go where they will find other lads engaged in the forbidden habit. They find congenial groups in pool-rooms, where they learn to gamble, and in the back rooms of saloons, where they learn to drink. The step from the pool-room or the saloon to other gambling-places and to drinking-places frequented by the unworthy of both sexes is an easy one. Thus the boy whose first wrong-doing was the smoking of cigarettes against the wishes of his parents soon becomes the target for all manner of immoral influences.

In these days of advanced sociological study, when the mind of the world is set upon efficiency, it is astonishing that so little attention has been given to the effect of tobacco upon the young. To mankind at the present time nothing in the world is so important as the conservation of the boy. Humanity might well make any sacrifice conceivable in order to keep its boys clean. Keeping boys clean means keeping girls clean, and whatever keeps boys and girls clean purifies humanity as a whole. In other words, the boy is the most important thing in the world, and his cleanliness the most vital issue. Setting aside entirely the deleterious effect of nicotine upon his physical system, early smoking, which usually means the cigarette, is the most harmful single influence that is at present working against his welfare. We can appreciate the terrific total harm which tobacco does to youth, however, only when we add the psychological harm and the physical harm together. Everything considered, the question is an appalling one.

In the state of existing conditions, it it is impossible to blame most boys very severely for yielding to the smoketemptation; therefore it becomes a difficult matter to blame them for the wrongdoing which tends to follow it. Their error is only the continuation of a similar error that their fathers have made before them and now tacitly encourage. It is difficult to make any lad believe that he need not be a fool because his father is one. Yet in most cases to save a boy from the demonstrable ills of tobacco-using entails just this course of reasoning.

Orators and essayists from the beginning of time have found a stumblingblock in preaching to their followers virtues they admire and value, but do not themselves possess. The father who forbids his son to smoke because it is harmful and expensive, while his own person reeks with it, is not likely to impress the lad very vividly with either the force or the honesty of his argument. More than one parent has found himself abashed in such circumstances by a son with logic and intelligence. For such a parent there is only one really honest course—to admit to his son that he himself has been a fool, but that he does not wish his son to follow in his footsteps.

There is no question in my mind that this matter of tobacco should be made the basis of a very thoro educational campaign among the youth of the United States. The shocking spread of the tobacco habit among the women of American cities indicates, moreover, need for extending this instruction to girls as well. I will deal with this phase of the problem in the August issue of the Medical Review Of Reviews.

Nothing in education is more generally neglected than the enlightenment of the young—an enlightenment which can come only from the mouths of elders who are themselves clean—as to the deadly nature of alcohol, habit-forming drugs, and tobacco.

I should very much dislike to send a young and impressionable son for instruction in any subject to any teacher, male or female, who used cigarettes. Thousands upon thousands of parents in this country feel as I do on this subject; but while they realize the danger that might result from the influence of a teacher who smokes, they utterly neglect the far more dangerous and powerful influence of a father who smokes. To my mind, however, it is essential that parents should seriously consider the personal character of the men to whom they intrust the education of their boys.

But the use of tobacco reaches far beyond the home circle and the schools and even pollutes the atmosphere of the church itself. There are few clergymen in the United States who do not use tobacco, and so a clean father who rears a clean son is under the tragic necessity of urging his attendance at a dirty church, and later on sending him to be a student in a dirty college, for the simple reason that there are no clean ones.

Society seems to have been viciously organized for the destruction of the boy, in whom lies its chief hope of preservation and improvement. The boy who keeps clean does so against tremendous odds, to which frequently his father, his school-teacher, and his clergyman are the chief contributors.

A dozen times during every day of his life he is subjected to the third degree of temptation, and twice out of three times this ordeal is thrust upon him by the very persons who really should do most to safeguard and protect him. And now that society has set its sanction upon the use of tobacco by the women of the nation, the boy is confronted with the further peril of a mother who smokes. It seems to me that this tobacco question detracts enormously from that very vivid hope we might feel for the rising generation, which is also handicapped with alcohol and drugs.

Many men were prejudiced against smoking until they went to college. There they found themselves 'out of it' because they did not smoke. More than that, they found that the smoke of social gatherings irritated their eyes and throat, and they thought that smoking might keep them from finding other people's smoke annoying. A man who had left off smoking told me that at the first 'smoker' he attended afterward he

found the air offensive and his eyes smarting intolerably, altho when he had been helping to create the clouds in which they were sitting he had not noticed it at all. These two experiences are common.

For the above-mentioned reason, the social inducements to smoking are considerably greater than those to drinking. The man who refuses to drink may feel as much 'out of it' as the man who refuses to smoke, but he has ordinarily, and in the presence of gentlemen, no other penalty to pay. He undergoes no discomfort in spending the evening in a roomful of drinkers, and he can manage to find things to drink that will have for them the semblance of good-fellowship. It is the social features that attend the acquiring and the leaving-off the habit which make smoking difficult to attack. In its present state, even if a boy were thoroly familiarized in school with the harm tobacco would do to him, he would still be seduced by the social side of it. When a habit fosters or traditionally accompanies social intercourse, it is all the harder to uproot.

The relation of tobacco, especially in the form of cigarettes, and alcohol and opium is a very close one. For years I have been dealing with alcoholism and morphinism, have gone into their every phase and aspect, have kept careful and minute details of between six and seven thousand cases, and I have never seen a case, except occasionally with women, which did not have a history of excessive tobacco.

A boy always starts smoking before he starts drinking. If he is disposed to drink, that disposition will be increased by smoking, because the action of tobacco makes it normal for him to feel the need of stimulation. He is likely to go to alcohol to soothe the muscular unrest, to blunt the irritation he has received from tobacco. The nervous condition due to excessive drinking is allayed by morphine, just as the nervous condition due to excessive smoking is allayed by alcohol. Morphine is the legitimate consequence of alcohol, and alcohol is the legitimate consequence of tobacco. Cigarettes, drink, opium, is the logical and regular series.

I have spent a good deal of time in the Orient in the interest of those who were trying to subdue the opium evil, and I may add that there is in China to-day a flourishing American tobacco concern which has grown rich out of the sale of cigarettes. With the extremely cheap Chinese labor, the concern was able to sell twenty cigarettes for a cent of our money. Up to the beginning of this enterprise, which commenced about fifteen years ago, the Chinese had never used tobacco except in pipes, and in very minute quantities in rolling their own crude cigarettes. Now it is estimated that one-half of the cigarette consumption of the world is in China. In trying to lessen the opium evil, in which they have to a considerable extent succeeded, the Chinese are merely substituting the cigarette evil. It is well known to the confirmed opium-smoker that he needs less opium if he smokes cigarettes. The Chinese to-day are spending twice as much money for tobacco as for opium.

If any one thinks that China is the gainer by substituting the one drug habit for the other, I beg leave to differ with him. The opium-smoker smokes in private with other smokers, and is thus not offensive to other people. He is not injuring non-smokers, or arousing the curiosity of boys, or polluting the atmosphere, or creating a craving in others. In the West the opium habit is generally condemned because the West is able to look with a new and unbiased mind on a drug habit that is not its own.

I consider that cigarette-smoking is the greatest vice devastating humanity to-day, because it is doing more than any other vice to deteriorate the race.

In the May issue, the Editor of this magazine wrote an editorial on Elbert Hubbard and Quackery; the charges he makes may all be true, but it should not be forgotten that Hubbard deserves the nation's gratitude for writing The Cigarettist. I close this article with Hubbard's words: 'Place no confidence in the cigarettist—he is an irresponsible being—a defective. Love him if you can; pity him if you will, but give him no chance to clutch you with his nicotine fingers and drag you beneath the wave.'
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The Old Home Wrecker- Harvey Washington Wiley

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"The Old Home-Wrecker"

http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA520&lpg=PA523&dq=harvey+Wiley+Tobacco+cigarettes+Good+Housekeeping&id=QSigAAAAMAAJ&ots=6EHPzYlvU_#v=onepage&q=harvey%20Wiley%20Tobacco%20cigarettes%20Good%20Housekeeping&f=false

Formerly, when a government official retired or was retired, he entered into the valley of oblivion, but nowadays he becomes a department editor. The Father of the Pure Food Law is now a private citizen, but thru his connection with the Good Housekeeping Magazine, Harvey W. Wiley speaks to a larger audience than when he was Uncle Sam's chemist.

We all know that Dr Wiley is one of those first-class fighting-men who would rather go against the wind than with it, but in the May issue of the Good Housekeeping Magazine, he admits he cannot refrain from joining in the growing protests against the use of alcoholic heverages. Dr Wiley does not believe in moderate drinking—he explains why he is firm for total abstinence.

After listening to some of the facts he presents, we feel it is fitting for him to repeat again the wisdom of Solomon: 'Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright; at the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.'

Dr Wiley's article is illustrated with charts which show graphically that the greatest wrecker of homes is that ancient enemy of mankind—alcohol. Thru the courtesy of the admirable publication in which they appeared, we are enabled to reproduce these charts.
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Protect Growing Youth Against Habit-forming Drugs- Harvey Washing Wiley

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Originally published- 1922

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles33n/talks-18.shtml

CHAIRMAN. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, now editor of Good Housekeeping, when head of the U. S. Bureau of Chemistry, speaking in the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D. C., at one of the sessions of an annual meeting of the International Reform Bureau, enumerated as "habit-forming drugs," from worst to least : alcohol, opium, cocain, tobacco, coffee, tea, chocolate, cocoa. All these are "nervines," that more or less upset the normalcy of the nerves, and make people "nervous" who should be nervy. These nervines so grip the nerves that they demand a new dose with increasing frequency. To illustrate the habit-forming quality in these various drugs and how it is taken advantage of for financial profit in nearly all patent medicines, Dr. Wiley told that day of a man introduced to him by a prominent general. The man so introduced desired the assistance of Dr. Wiley in making a new patent medicine for the drug market. He had been greatly benefited by taking a spoonful of olive oil between meals. He felt sure it would also benefit others, but he said : "I know that I could not get profit from plain olive oil. Tell me what drug I could put in by a secret formula that would make people feel they must have it every day." Dr. Wiley said that but for the man's distinguished sponsor who had sent him there not knowing his errand, he should have kicked him out of the room meaning that it is a rascally thing to bind anybody to a habit-forming drug.

We all know how the opium sot cries "I'm all in" after a certain short interval from his last "shot." The man whose nerves have been poisoned with alcohol wants it oftener and more of it week by week.

In Australia I found that tea had become to many an enslaving "dope." The man thus affected took a cup of tea on rising to "strengthen" him for dressing; another cup of tea at breakfast; another cup of tea at 11 A. M. even in the office of a temperance paper; another cup of tea at tiffin, as they call the noon lunch; another cup at "5 o'clock tea" a cup of tea also at every call, if he made any ; a cup of tea at supper ; and Pullman trains on which I rode stopped twice in the night for travelers, in their bathrobes, to run across the frosted platform to the refreshment room, each time for a cup of tea. Most Americans feel they must have coffee three times a day, and many of them fill in between cups and between meals with cigarettes.

In a letter in my files from L. F. Kebler, Chief of the Drug Division of the U. S. Bureau of Chemistry, written shortly before the World War, June 24, 1914, he said that "five grains of caffein (2 cups of coffee) would kill a rabbit weighing about two pounds." In that letter he also said that when the U. S. Bureau of Chemistry began its investigations, a "goodly number of the drinks sold at soda fountains contained cocain," but so far as the Bureau had information none of them were on the market in 1914, but "the number of caffein preparations" had remained "about the same."

Children are not killed outright by coffee but the two cups of coffee that would kill a rabbit will unquestionably kill some of the tiny precious cells in a child's body. "Every drop of beer kills a cell," science tells us, and surely every full cup of coffee does as much harm as a drop of beer to a growing child. I do not attempt to persuade full-grown people to give up coffee or tea or chocolate, much less cocoa, which is the only one in the list I drink, and that but seldom. But let us try to keep the new generation from all these "habit drugs."

How shall we make boys and girls feel the wisdom of the rule every parent should make that they shall let all habit-forming drugs alone at least until they are of age and can decide for themselves?

Tell them, for one thing, that Sir Isaac Newton, the great thinker, who saw in a falling apple the law of the planets, said, "I make myself no necessities." He saw that many people were all tied up with habits that, like the strings of a jumping jack, made them do foolish things. Tell them that coffee is a crutch, that no strong boy or girl needs. Tell them water is the real "strong drink," the drink of the strong ox, and of the swift eagle; the drink of the winning athletes.

Effect of Tobacco on Growing Youth

Dr. Wiley named tobacco next to alcohol and opium in his list of habit-forming drugs. We draw the line right there in legislation. The sale of liquors and opium to anybody should be prohibited save as a guarded medicine, but I refused in 1922 to support legislation proposed in Arkansas that carried the prohibition of tobacco beyond minors. I believe we should rely upon argument to stop the use of tobacco in case of adults, whether men or women. But we should by law protect non-smokers against the impositions of selfish smokers who are so careless of the safety and comfort of others that they smoke where they may start a fire, and where they will make others to whom smoke is nauseating or distasteful breathe their second-hand smoke even in places protected by "no smoking" signs. One of the strong arguments against smoking is that it turns gentlemen into rowdies, in some cases, in the fundamental matter of consideration for others. Another is the representative statement made by the National Board of Underwriters that "careless smokers were responsible for the greatest amount of fire loss from 1916 to 1921." The report was for the District of Columbia, but there is no reason for thinking the National Capital is worse than other places in this respect.

More Deadly Than German Gas

Hudson Maxim, one of the world's greatest writers on munitions and inventor of the bomb-proof ship, said during the World War : "The numbers of our men killed and the number injured by all the poinsonous gases of and injured by the poisonous gases og cigarette smoke Germans will be far fewer than those who will be killed which our hyper-sentimentality is inflicting upon them, while the after effects will be even worse. I do not for one minute mean to imply that cigarette smoke is as virulent a poison as the gases employed against our troops by the Germans, but I do mean that cigarette smoke will be responsible for a larger number of deaths than the poisonous gases of the Germans, and I claim that the permanent effects of the cigarette poison are even worse than the after effects of the poisonous gases of the Germans, be-cause while the German gases. affect the body they do not, like the cigarette, impair the mind."

Why Put Yourself in a State of Narcosis?

What does tobacco do to us? There is in it a poison called nicotine so deadly that one full drop of it would kill an adult. A smaller portion of it taken for the first time by a boy makes him deathly sick. That gives warning of its poisonous character, but doesn't usually wean him from the folly. It did not in my case, for I speak as an ex-smoker. I quit at the end of my first week, after.

I had got over the nausea and had begun to enjoy "a good cigar." But I had already discovered that tobacco would hobble my brain and lead others to follow my bad example. Tobacco of any kind puts a soft-pedal on efficiency of mind and body. It puts us in a state of narcosis. We are half chloroformed. The Literary Digest of April 15, 1922, records a test of the effects of tobacco on efficiency at Stanford University. Telegraph operators of three kinds were selected for the test. None of them smoked on duty. Those who smoked much when off duty were regarded as "heavy smokers." Their percentage of efficiency was 38. Those who smoked two pipes a day or one cigar, or two or three cigarettes before and after work and at noon, were regarded as "light smokers." Their efficiency was 40.1. The women operators, non-smokers, though of the "weaker sex," excelled both the other groups with an efficiency record of 46.6. The nicotine not only dulls our nerve cells, but kills some of them. If you have brains to burn, a tobacco bonfire is a good way to get rid of the surplus. One criminal lawyer argued jocosely to me that it was better for the world that he should smoke as he could in that case do less harm in his profession. I seriously agreed that was one of the many cases where "truth had been spoken in jest." If your work for the world is a curse, the more you dull your powers and shorten your life through "Lady Nicotine," the better.

Women Who Smoke "Bad Risks" in More Senses Than One

MRS. ESTHER. Speaking of "Lady Nicotine," a name that gets new significance because women are beginning to smoke, I am reminded to quote what U. S. Surgeon General Hugh S. Cummings has said about women smoking :

"The cigarette habit indulged in by women tends to cause nervousness and insomnia. If American women generally contract the habit, as reports now indicate they are doing, the entire American nation will suffer. The physical tone of the whole nation will be lowered. This is one of the most evil influences in American life today. The number of American women who are smoking cigarettes is amazing. THE HABIT HARMS A WOMAN MORE THAN IT DOES A MAN. The woman's nervous system is more highly organized than the man's. The reaction, therefore, is more intense, ruining her complexion, causing it to become gradually yellow and ashen."

MRS. FISK. Miss Frances Partridge, general secretary of the Women's Benefit Association, who yearly keeps tab on 250,000 risks, all women, was quoted in the Herald-Examiner, September 2, 1921, as saying: "Except for the recent fad of smoking and drinking, the girl of today has it about three to one over her frailer sister of the hoop skirt era. If we find out that a woman smokes or drinks we do not accept her application."

CHAIRMAN. There is another fact about tobacco, not generally known, which ought to be known to all who in this day of unparalleled temptations to impurity are making "the fight for character." I refer to the fact that tobacco stimulates the passions speaking scientifically, is a "sexual irritant." The health officer of the National Capital confirmed that view in an interview at the Y. M.

C. A. where it was quite a new truth to some of the workers. When both the man and woman in a position of mutual moral peril have had their nerves spurred by tobacco, the peril of a runaway is doubled.

An Appeal to Boys

MR. BROWN. For my contribution to this Round Table I should like to read from a book on "The Cigaret Boy" by Hon. Edward Hyatt, written when he was Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of California:

"Boys, the fun and success of your whole life and that of your friends are going to depend very largely upon what you do during the next ten years ; and I urge each one of you to resolve to do without cigarettes for the next ten years and to hang to that resolution like grim death.

You. have a long and tough old fight ahead of you to keep your head above water, and make a living for fifty years. All the time you'll keenly need every ounce of strength and steadiness and wind you can summon to your aid. But if you take on the habit of smoking before you are grown, the other fellow will get away with you and you will often go down to humiliating defeat simply because in boyhood you drugged yourself so that you are not so tough and strong in body nor so cool and steady in mind as you would otherwise be.

It is not enough to see that a good many admirable boys and men are smoking without apparent damage; if we look about and think we shall see that the boys who use cigarettes are most likely to be poor specimens of humanity, thin-faced, nervous, unable to study or stick to a job.

We shall see that athletic managers do not want them, that they are undesirable to practical employers. They have a poor chance among the strongest and best people everywhere.

This is why I ask you to do without cigarettes for the next ten years. How strong is your will? Can you do it?"
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Friday, 1 April 2011

The Drugging of Children- Harvey Washington Wiley

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from Good Housekeeping, January 1913

The Drugging of Children

At Home, and More Particularly at the Soda Fountain

An abstract of address delivered by Dr. Harvey W. Wiley before the National Education Association in Chicago


IT is a lamentable fact that in many of our some cities attempts have been made to city schools, children are at a disadvant- remedy some of these deficiencies, espeage by reason of improper clothing and daily those relating to poor luncheons, the necessity of doing without nourishing In the city of Washington, the school food, especially at the luncheon hour. In authorities established a number of tables And Coca Cola and other caffeinated drinks are open to the same objection where simple but nutritious lunch could be bought for a penny by some of those who were unable to bring proper food from home. Where this experiment has been tried it has been the universal consensus of opinion that the scholarship and deportment of those who received these simple benefactions have been improved. To show the hold that mercenary interests have on the country I may say that, when these attempts were made in Washington to supply wholesome and nutritious luncheons to the poor children, protests were made by dealers in candies, etc., in the vicinity of the school, against the practice, on the ground that serving the luncheon in the school room prevented the children from coming into their stores and buying their goods. Happily this commercial objection did not succeed in breaking down the plan adopted by the school authorities in Washington.

A still more important problem is that condition of school children which, for lack of a better term, is called nervousness. What is it that has ruined the children's nerves? In my opinion it does not as a rule come from over-study though occasionally that might have been the case. The trouble with the children of this country is that after the manner of their parents they are subjected to exhilaration by stimulants of various kinds, which have no food value and can work only injury. I refer especially to coffee and tea at home, the acquisition by the young boys of the tobacco habit, and the indulgence by the boys and girls in the so-called soft drinks which contain cocain or caffein. Fortunately the effectiveness of the campaign against cocain has driven most of the beverages containing it from the soda fountains, but this is not true of those containing caffein.

Coffee is too powerful a stimulant for children

The Drug Division of the Department of Agriculture secured the names of over one hundred so-called soft drinks sold at soda fountains which contained either caffein or cocain or both. As a rule no soda fountain sells over two or three of these soft drinks, but they are offered in the large numbers which I have mentioned in the various parts of the country. Inasmuch as every authority has agreed that cocain is a substance to be kept out of foods, I shall confine my remarks solely to those products containing caffein.

The health officers of Washington issued a letter of caution to parents in which it was urged that they should not allow their children to use tea or coffee at home. Nothing was said in this circular, however, about patronizing soda fountains where beverages containing caffein were sold. In point of fact, it is commonly admitted by experts that caffein-bearing beverages taken upon an empty stomach are more injurious than the same amount of caffein would be, consumed with meals. Now the consumption of tea and coffee at home with meals is less harmful than the drinking of caffeinated beverages at the soda fountains. The name of one of these beverages most frequently found is Coca Cola. Indeed, it is somewhat rare at the present time to find a soda fountain that does not sell this beverage. A glass of Coca Cola contains about the same amount of caffein as a cup of tea or coffee, and children in drinking this are doing the very thing their parents would not have them do if they knew it. The authorities should be as careful to caution against the use of Coca Cola as against coffee and tea. It is bad enough for grown people to drink these beverages without offering them to children.

But there is another reason why the children suffer with that indescribable condition called nervousness. While we may not inherit infectious diseases and nervousness itself, we may come into the world with an inheritance which is favorable to the breaking down of the nervous system. Why, may I ask, is this the case? The answer is obvious: We are the most bedrugged nation of the earth. Men and women are victims of morphin, codein, heroin, cocain, chloroform, and cannabis indica. They are saturated with tobacco and alcohol, and this added to the everlasting drugging is entirely sufficient to account for the destruction of our nerves. They cannot resist the bombardment.

How often do I hear the phrase, "I can drink a strong cup of coffee with no ill effect." The same excuse is urged for the use of alcoholic beverages. "I drink a glass of beer, or wine, or whisky, without feeling any ill effect," says the one who is addicted to the drug habit; "I never become intoxicated." But it is not the fourth or fifth drink of whisky which intoxicates; it is the sum of the first, second and third drinks. If there is no foundation there is no structure. Because the injury is not measured by any ordinary rule of dimensions, is no proof that it does not exist. The result is that not only are our children subject to all kinds of nervous defects but the grown people are more so.

It is often said that these stimulants are useful for mental effect. Learned men have written treatises at the instigation of the Coca Cola Company to show that caffein is positively beneficial. A story ran through one of the magazines showing that the brilliant playwright could not produce a striking success except under the influenceof alcohol. All such stuff as this is merely illusionary. Neither coffee, nor tea, nor tobacco, nor alcohol, nor opium, nor cocain, nor hasheesh, ever produced a brilliant thought. They sometimes cut loose the sense of responsibility and make one feel as if he were a genius; but they do nothing but harm. The inhabitants of the Grecian peninsula owed nothing of their genius to any of the dopes mentioned. The world would be better today if coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, morphine, opium and its derivatives, cannabis, acetanilid, and all their progeny, relations, and assymptotes were blotted from the face of the earth.

But it is not for me to describe what men and women of mature age shall eat, drink and smoke. My duty is to save, if possible, the children. If we can save the children, all right. We need not have much fear for the men and women that come after; they will be strong, self-reliant, and capable of taking care of themselves. My plea, therefore, to the teachers of the nation is to join in the great work to banish from the menu of the child every single substance which hits the nerves, excites undue activity, or produces unnatural stimulation, and to substitute in its place a wholesome, nutritious, plain, simple diet, which may enable the child to grow and become a healthy and valuable citizen.





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