Dilute Cocaine in Vin Mariani, Coca-Cola & Harvey Wiley - According to Steven B. Karch

A Brief History of Cocaine - Steven B. Karch

pp 100-102

If our drug policies appear convoluted today, think how they must have looked to the owners of the Coca-Cola Company just after the turn of the century.  In 1911, company officials found themselves in federal court, charged with, among other things, not putting cocaine in Coca- Cola.  Popular histories of this period usually lump Coca-Cola with the [sic] other quack nostrums [sic- a nostrum is simply a medicated liquid meant to be take orally], often suggesting that the problem of cocaine abuse in America was, in some way, connected to the successes of the Coca-Cola Company.  Except for the titillation factor, the idea has little to recommend it.  Even when Coca-Cola contained cocaine, the amounts were trivial; too small to produce measurable physiological or behavioral changes.  Coca-Cola was not responsible for America's cocaine problem, but government harassment of the Atlanta soft drink maker did mark an important turning point in the development of American drug policy, and is worth examining in some detail.

Government moves against Coca-Cola were orchestrated by Dr. Harvey Wiley, a zealous bureaucrat.  Wiley was the first head of the Bureau of Chemistry within the Department of Agriculture, the agency responsible for enforcing the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.  Wiley was one in a series of government officials, such as Hamilton Wright and Harry Anslinger, who made their living by campaigning against the evils of drug abuse.  These anti drug crusaders had more in common than just the desire to rid society of its drug problem; all were willing to use very bad, sometimes fraudulent science to advance their arguments.  The duel problem of "drug careerism", and the tendency to use political considerations as a means of determining scientific truth, have not gone away.  However, the issues were more clearly framed at the turn of the century.

During the early 1900s, the patent medicine [sic- a 'patent medicine' would be something that is patentable, aka a synthetic creation today known as a 'pharmaceutical', what is referred to here are actually 'proprietary medicines' generally blended compounds of naturally existing substances] market was crowded and fiercely competitive [ahh!!- generally meaning less expensive].  No central registry for these products ever existed, but informed estimates suggest that, at one time, more than 25,000 different patent medications were for sale in the United States.  As is true today, the success or failure of a new product was determined by the amount of money producers could spend on advertising.  Millions upon millions were spent promoting these products, and since the market was completely unregulated, even the most outrageous claims were permitted.  Revenues from patent [sic] drugmakers turned publishers into lobbyists for the drugmakers. Drug producers offered long term advertising contracts, but the contracts all contained automatic cancellation clauses, if by some accident, laws were passes prohibiting sales of heir product.  The publishers, of course, made every effort to see that that did not occur.

While some of the claims for Angelo Mariani's wine may have been overblown, there never was any doubt that the product contained wine and coca.  Using only coca leaf meant that there was a limit on how much cocaine Mariani could get into the wine.  By the mid 1890s, however, there was a glut of cocaine on the market, and patent [sic] drugmakers were able to dump large amounts of cocaine into their products [sic- I've seen no indication of this with the beverages, rather the problem were types of preparations meant for more direct use, such as intranasal or by injection], making them very popular, but addictive [sic- a better term would be 'toxic-maniac] and dangerous.

The medical literature of the late 1800s contains dozens of reports describing severe, occasionally lethal, reactions to cocaine anesthesia.  But as far as anyone knows, no one ever became ill, let alone addicted, to Vin Mariani, or any other coca-based wine.  Vin Mariani contained only a very small amount of cocaine, probably less than 6 mg per ounce, not enough to cause toxicity.  When combined with alcohol, however, a 6 to 8 ounce serving would have been more than enough to create feelings of well being.  The real secret behind Vin Mariani's success was not even known to Mariani, and was only discovered more than a century later.

In the late 1980s, the number of cocaine-related deaths in Miami, Florida began to explode.  lee Hearn, a toxicologist with the Miami Dade County Medical Examiner office, and Deborah Mash, a neurochemist at the University of Miami, first noted that when the deceased had been drinking alcohol and using cocaine at the same time, a new molecule, somewhat like cocaine, could be detected in their urine.  These observations were confirmed by Peter Jatlow at Yale, and another group of scientists in Barcelona.  It is now clear that cocaethylene has most of the same stimulant properties as cocaine, but that it lasts much longer.  Even though the cocaine content of Mariani's wine was relatively low, mixing the cocaine with alcohol resulted in a much higher effective dose!

Coca-Cola contained even less cocaine than Vin Mariani.  According to a formulation held by the great-grandson of Frank Robinson, one of Coca-Cola's founders, 10 pounds of coca leaf were used to make 36 gallons of syrup.  Coca leaf from South America contains very little cocaine, probably less than 0.5%, and not all of that can be extracted.  Thus Coca-Cola, as originally produced, would have contained about 100 mg of cocaine per gallon (10lb=22.5 kg, 55 x 22.5 kg = 112 mg) or 1.5 mg per ounce, only one-fourth the amount of cocaine found in Vin Mariani.  Such minute amounts of cocaine would certainly not have been enough to produce a detectable physiological response, and it is absurd to suggest that Coca-Cola ever had addictive properties, or that its cocaine content was responsible for its success.  Coca-Cola was successful for the very same reason that Vin Mariani was successful: it was brilliantly promoted.  Coca-Cola's managers were better salesmen than Mariani's, and Coca-Cola prospered, while Mariani gradually lost market share.  Coca-Cola continued to grow and prosper long after the cocaine had been dropped from the original formula.  Vin Mariani was not so well promoted, and after World War I, it simply faded from existence.

Dale Gieringer On The Slippery Slope to Prohibition

How the 1906 'Pure Foods and Drug Act' practically empowered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to ban dilute cocaine, thus shifting the market of that drug to the infinitely more dangerous concentrated forms ....

... and to go further, how lying about cocaine was meant to protect markets for Tobacco.  That was evident with the 1906 Act's limiting the USDA's authority over substances in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, from which Tobacco had been deleted in 1905, and the 1910 USDA Farmers' Bulletin article "Habit Forming Agents- Their Sale and Use a Menace to the Public Welfare", which decried the use of Coca against Tobacco, so described as "what is commonly believed to be a comparatively harmless habit" - authored by L.F. Kebler.  Yet it was Kebler, who in 1912 testified at a U.S. House of Representatives COMMlTTEE ON lNTERSTATE AND FORElGN COMMERCE hearing on the Food and Drug Act, that "tobacco and preparations of tobacco contain arsenic and lead, due to the fact that there has been used in the growing of tobacco lead arsenate, a chemical to deter or kill certain pests. As a matter of fact, some tobacco contains a goodly quantity of arsenic.... most of them would be dangerous to health".

http://www.drugsense.org/dpfca/Liberty1906Centennial.htm

[excerpt]

One of the [1906 Food and Drug] act's central provisions was to require that medicines bear warning labels if they contained habit-forming drugs such as alcohol, opiates, cocaine, cannabis, or chloral hydrate (plus the now-forgotten alpha- and beta-eucaine, chloroform, and acetanilide). It further required that the quantities of these drugs be specified on the label. In essence, this was a "truth in labeling" policy, which, being informative, not prohibitive, was altogether consistent with the principles of J.S. Mill. Contemporary observers credited the act with a substantial decline in the use of patent medicines with dangerous intoxicants.⁵

However, the act had a dark side as well, as it put the power to make decisions about what drugs could be sold into the hands of a new federal regulatory agency — the Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, the predecessor of today's FDA. In specific, the Bureau was empowered to remove products that it found to be "adulterated" with substances "deleterious" to human health, and to ban the importation of any drug deemed "dangerous to the health of the people of the United States." The definition of such terms inevitably involved subjective value judgments, which under the act would be determined by federal bureaucrats instead of individual consumers and producers in the market. The dangers of this arrangement were aptly pointed out by Sen. Nelson Aldrich (grandfather of Gov. Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, the eponymous author of New York's punitive drug law), who warned that "the liberty of all the people of the United States" would be undermined by "chemists of the Agriculture Department" with an interest in regulation.⁶ No doubt Sen. Aldrich's remarks were aimed at the Bureau's crusading director, Harvey Washington Wiley, who had championed the new law. An aggressive proponent of regulation, Wiley was a forerunner of today's consumer protectionists, highly averse to chemical additives, inclined to exaggerating scientific evidence about their dangers, and prohibitionist with regards to many substances, including alcohol. Taking an aggressive interpretation of the act's provisions regarding "adulteration," Wiley sought to have several popular ingredients banned from the food supply, among them saccharin, sodium benzoate, and caffeine. His efforts wound up discrediting him with President Theodore Roosevelt, who remarked, "Anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot."⁷

However, Wiley was more successful with cocaine, which enjoyed popularity as an ingredient in several tonics and beverages but had recently come into disrepute. Cocaine is derived from the coca leaf, used since time immemorial by South American Indians with no evident ill effects. It was first popularized in the form of relatively mild tonics such as the famous Vin Mariani — endorsed by Thomas Edison, Pope Leo XIII, and President McKinley — and the original Coca-Cola. Like the coca tea enjoyed in the Andes, these beverages contained low levels of cocaine, and produced no evident ill effects.

However, problems began to arise with the introduction of more potent cocaine in pure, powdered form following the announcement of its remarkable pharmaceutical properties by Carl Koller in 1884. A brief flurry of medical enthusiasm was soon dampened by disturbing reports of addiction, as previously normal patients became transformed into crazed "cocaine fiends." In the South, cocaine was blamed for inciting violent behavior in blacks. In the nation's capital, cocaine was seen as "one of the growing evils of the city among the lower classes," and became a motivating factor in the District Commissioners' push for the D.C. Pharmacy and Poisons Act.⁸ By 1906, nearly half the states had laws prohibiting the sale of cocaine except on a doctor's prescription — essentially the model followed in the Harrison Act.

Although the Pure Food and Drugs Act was not prima facie a prohibition law, its provisions regarding food adulteration gave the Bureau leverage to intervene in the marketplace. In specific, the act defined adulterants to include any "deleterious ingredient" that might render the article "injurious to health."

Seizing on this provision, Wiley declared cocaine to be an "adulterant" and sued to have it removed from beverages. At no point did Wiley ever show that the low levels of cocaine in coca beverages were actually injurious to health. Indeed, coca beverages and leaf remain legal to this day in the Andean countries, where they are thought to help stave off fatigue, hunger, and diabetes. Nevertheless, Wiley succeeded in pressuring manufacturers to withdraw all cocaine from their beverages.

Ironically, that left only the more potent, addictive form of cocaine available on the market as a pharmaceutical drug. Although cocaine was ultimately restricted to prescription-only use under the Harrison Act, nothing could stop it from leaking out into the nonmedical black market, eventually metastasizing into other countries and becoming one of the world's largest criminal enterprises. Wiley's ban on coca would eventually be incorporated into international law by the Single Convention Treaty (1961), at the insistence of U.S. drug bureaucrats. While criminalization of the coca trade has effectively "protected" American consumers from harmless coca beverages, it has left millions more exposed to illicit, high-potency cocaine. Meanwhile, it has inflamed a violent war in Latin America that has cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars, claimed thousands of casualties, and injected corruption, violence, gangsterism, and criminality into what was a peaceful and lawful business a century ago.

 

The Evil Prohibition to Promote Cigarettes

let's call it what it really is - an outdated agricultural mercantilism
The 'Drug War' - Banning the safest stimulant (Coca) for the sake of protecting and promoting the most dangerous (Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco)

The last U.S. Bottle of Vin Mariani?

the 1906+ restrictions and ban of Opium and Coca and the protected market growth of Virginia Bright Leaf Cigarettes- against the 'Tobacco Habit Cure' of Coca

It's a pity that a man as Ronald Wilson Reagan ignored the utter inconsistencies of his political sloganeering about excessive and fiscaly unwise government, particularly concerning such governments' choice of agricultural commodities we are offered for our daily stimulation and relaxation, cir:1884-1906

- machines for the mass production of cigarettes are 1st deployed; previously they had to be hand rolled.  Nonetheless sales of such cigarettes grew reletively slowly until 1906.

- isolated cocaine is introduced commercially. Introduced in a variety of forms, with the more potent concentrated forms remaining a minor niche item, and most use the dilute useful Coca products, until 1906.  Until the USDA was able to step in with its goal of protecting U.S. domestic agriculture.

U.S. Cigarette production spiked with drug prohibition: 1906, 1914,1937;

coinciding with the crackdowns on Opium, Coca and Cannabis

(p230 Licit & Illicit Drugs Breecher)

1906 U.S. Food and Drugs Act - key points - selective listing of ingrediants - 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, but not caffeine or nicotine - granted dictatorial power to the USDA Bureau of Chemistry to ban whatever it determined as 'dangerous or detrimental to health ingrediants, while excluding Tobacco from this USD of Agriculture regulatory authority for being de-listed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia which this Act defined the sope of the regulatory authority to those substances (drugs) contained within.  The Act was used by USDA Bureau of Chemistry Chief (1883-1912) Harvey Wiley, paradox - also of the AMA-APhA Council on Pharmacology, who developed a strong thrust to inveigh against 'cocaine' regardless of dosage or form in 1904, including via a media campaign designed to confuse the public about the dangers of concentrate cocaine in some vaguely defined way to imply dangers nonexistent with dilute cocaine.   Dilute cocaine/Coca products dissapear from retail and altogther, while concentrated cocaine - infinitly the most dangerous for of the drug become's its sole available form.

Harvey Washington Wiley

Lyman Frederick Kebler

Of particular 'concern' to the USDA, 'cocaine' or more accurately dilute cocaine in products either or by the isolated alkloid or the more or less whole leaf extract, used as a substitute for Tobacco.  According to the overtly mercantilist propaganda piece April 20, 1910 USDA. Farmer's Journal article "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare" by L.F. Kebler:

There are quite a number of so-called tobacco habit cures on the market.

The USDA here wrote "so-called tobacco habit cures.." in refusing to acknowledge the utility it was here condemning, continuing:

All of them are ineffective, and some contain cocain in one form or another, which at once indicates the purpose of the promoter of the remedy. Instead of eradicating what is commonly believed to be a comparatively harmless habit, there is grave danger of fastening a pernicious drug habit upon the user. Examples of preparations of this character recently examined and found to contain cocain and caffein derivatives are Coca-Bola, Tobacco Bullets, and Wonder Workers. The Coca Bola is marketed by Dr. Charles L. Mitchell, of "Philadelphia, and the Tobacco Bullets by the Victor Remedy Company, now the Blackburn Remedy Company, of Dayton, Ohio, while the Wonder Workers were produced by George S. Beck, of Springfield, Ohio.

That followed a January 1, 1910 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) 'Pharmacology' review (at pp 63-64 of Volume LIV, Number 1), “Coca Bola and Oxy-Tonic: Two Nostrums Exposed by the Chemists of the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station” by E.F. Ladd, a chemist at the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station

"We have recently had occasion to examine a sample of Coca Bola, a product labeled as having been produced by Charles L. Mitchell, M.D., Philadelphia, and the face label bears the following statement:

Each ounce contains 0.71 grams of cocain. A chewing paste of leaves of the cocoa [sic] plant, combined with other valuable tonics. The directions for use say coca-bola is made in the form of flat cakes or plugs divided into squares and should be used by chewing one of the small squares marked on the plug and swallowing the saliva.

They further say it should be used at occasional intervals as needed throughout the day. To get its full effect it will be necessary to use several squares. They further say:

"Although a powerful muscular or nervous tonic, coca-bola has no evil after-effects, and hence is far superior to any other stimulant in the material medica"

Now this information given out in the advertising which accompanies each package is, it would seem, intended to give the impression that this product is an entirely harmless one; in other words, that a preparation containing cocain as an active constituent, is to be generally recommended for use without any caution as to the harm that may come from forming a habit for cocain. They further say:

"A small portion chewed occasionally acts as a powerful tonic to the muscular and nervous system, enabling the chewer to perform additional labor, and also relieves fatigue and exhaustion without evil after effects. It contains no injurious ingredients and is perfectly harmless."

So we might quote from the circular which is sent out by a man who claims to be a physician, urging, as it were, on the people the use of a product of this kind, which, as has clearly been shown, must in the end result in the formation of the cocain habit, if not in the complete demoralization and degradation of the individual himself.

The laws of North Dakota prohibit the sale of any compound or product in the state which contains cocaine in any form. It further prohibits the refilling of a physician’s prescription that contains cocain, and yet a product of this kind, it would seem from information that has been gathered, is sold directly to the customer, although it is true that the proprietor of the product maintains that it is now sold only to physicians.

The JAMA article echos the assumptions of "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare"

During the last twenty years a large number of soft drinks containing caffein and smaller or greater quantities of coca leaf and kola nut products have been placed upon the market. Preparations of this class, on account of insufficient information, were formally looked upon as harmless, but they are now known to be an impending evil.

Centuries before cocain was introduced as a remedial agent, wonderful accounts of the energy-creating properties of coca leaves were chronicled. The phenomenal endurance attributed to the Peruvians and others was often ascribed to the stimulating effects produced by the chewing of coca leaves, and this idea has been widely exploited. It is believed to some extent at present that the use of cocain taken internally produces a sense of exhilaration, and the amount of muscular and mental power appears to be temporarily increased. Impetus was given to this belief by the enthusiastic reports of this drug, published not only in medical literature but in the secular press as well.

Cocain is one of the most insidious and dangerous habit-forming drugs at present known. Many lives have been wrecked and many crimes have been committed as a result of its use, and strenuous efforts are being made to curtail its employment. The amount present in certain soft drinks is small, to be sure, but such an insidious, habit-forming drug certainly has no place whatsoever in these products. The presence of tropococain, an ally of cocain, has also been established.

Not only is it pernicious to add cocain to soft drinks in any quantity (usually in the form of coca leaf extract), but even the use of coca leaf extract so manipulated as to reduce the amount of cocain, or eliminate it altogether, must be looked upon as a questionable practice, because any product or name which would suggest the presence of cocain or its allies, by taste or otherwise, must have a baneful influence. It is known that the very small amounts of morphine or cocain, or even the suggestion of their presence, will tend to destroy the equilibrium of reformed addicts and bring back the former craving.

The virtues of coca leaves and kola nuts have been exploited together, and it is only natural that they should be combined in preparations which would represent the purported virtues of both. Such combinations were made with the result that quite a number of so-called soft drinks now on the market contain both of the habit-forming agents, cocaine and caffeine. It was not uncommon to find persons addicted to the use of medicated soft-drinks. It is well-known fact that many factory employees, stenographers, typewriters, and others subjected to mental or nervous strain spend a large part of their earnings for drinks of this character.

In passing, it may be of interest to note that life insurance companies are considering the status of soft-drink habitués as future risks.

Various arguments have been advanced in justification of the use of caffeine and the extract of coca leaves, treated or otherwise, in soft drinks. It is a well known that parents, as a rule, withhold tea and coffee from their children, but having no knowledge of the presence of cocain, caffeine or other deleterious agents in soft drinks, they unwittingly permit their children to be harmed by their use. Manufacturers of drinks of this class, containing cocain, have been successfully prosecuted, for example, Koca Nola, Celery Cola, Wiseola, Pillsbury's Koke, Kola-Ade, Kos-Kola, Cafe-Coca, and Koke.

Absent was any demonstration, only baseless presumption, that use of products as Coca-Bola resulted in a 'cocaine habit' of any greater legitimate public health concern than a 'caffeine habit' or a 'nicotine habit'.  Indeed at the COMMlTTEE ON lNTERSTATE AND FORElGN COMMERCE hearing on the Food and Drug Act, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, April 3, 1912, L.F. Kebler testified about Tobacco products:

http://books.google.com/books?output=text&id=dgE9AAAAYAAJ&dq=food+drugs+act&jtp=1 

Dr. Kebler. Yes; and investigation has shown that tobacco and preparations of tobacco contain arsenic and lead, due to the fact that there has been used in the growing of tobacco lead arsenate, a chemical to deter or kill certain pests. As a matter of fact, some tobacco contains a goodly quantity of arsenic.... We have not been able to go into that as fully as we would like. We know that tobacco is adulterated, but how generally it is adulterated we do not know.

Mr. Hamilton. I suppose you would be able to cite certain brands that are dangerous to health, would you not?

Dr. Kebler. I suppose most of them would be dangerous to health.

Get that.  Kebler knew Tobacco products contaned lead and arsenic from their methods of commercial agriculture, yet his "Habit-Forming Agents: Their Indiscriminate Sale and Use A Menace to the Public Welfare" concern about this Tobacco, was it being displaced by Coca - of course as the U.S.D.A.'s very mission from its onset was promoting domestic agriculture.

Likewise, Wiley knew Tobacco as harmful.  Writing for an article published in 1922:

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

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

Absent was any demonstration from Wiley/Kebler's AMA-APha of any dangers with dilute cocaine in products as Vin Mariani (the 1905 Council of Pharmacy condemnation focused upon its labeling as foreign, when in fact its foreign formulation was replicated in Mariani & Co.'s New York facility for North American sales with the identical formula and ingrediants).   Although Wiley was famous for his USDA 'Poison squad' volunteer tests of foods laced with varius additives, he apparantly never had such a demonstration even attempted for coca or cocaine.  This was even as he persued numerous prosecutions of Coca or otherwise dilute cocaine food products for "adulteration" - for containing a dangerous substance to wit cocaine.  Usually such prosecutions were coupled with those for "mislabeling" for not stating cocaine on the label; however, as his famous prosecution against Coca-Cola demonstrated, Wiley did not see himself needing a charge of "mislabeling" required for one of "adulteration" which he brought against Coca-Cola for containing the 'dangerous' substance of caffeine.

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/post-1906-demise-of-us-coca.html

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-dark-ages-usda-crusade-against-coca.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wiley-cocaine-policy.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-washington-wiley-paradox.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-usurpation-of-power-over.html

      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-subversion-of-our-freedom-of.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/harvey-wiley-resume-1915.html
      http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/wileys-great-american-fraud-of.html

What is a drug habit? .... The habit-forming drugs which are most extensively used are alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. If we class as drug addicts those who have acquired the habit for one or more of these drugs the number of them in the United States would be very close to half or two-thirds of the population. When we speak of drug addicts, however, we usually have in mind a more restricted sense and refer rather to those who are slaves to opium or the coca leaf and their derivatives. ... I would not favor of any restrictive legislation respecting tobacco and tea and coffee, except in so far as children are concerned. [box 201 - Harvey Wiley papers]

In the sudden light which the Pure Food law throws into certain dark corners, that widely-bruited pick-me-up for lassitudinous ladies, Vin Mariani, takes on a changed aspect. From the enthusiastic encomiums, given out for advertising purposes by sundry actresses, one might suppose that the so-called French preparation was at once the most bracing and the most harmless of concoctions. Across its label, however, the pure food law has recorded the warning fact: "Each ounce represents one-tenth of one grain of cocain." This shuts it out of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, all cities and towns in Massachusetts, and many other places. As the average American woman can read and is not a fool. I fancy that even in those localities where cocain can be sold only in patent medicine form without a prescription (as has been the case until recently in the District of Columbia, thanks to Senator and ex-Doctor Gallinger's efforts on behalf of the nostrum people), the Vin Mariani trade will rapidly decline.

Next to cocain nostrums, the most dangerous class of patent medicines is that containing narcotics, such as opium, morphin and cannabis indica. Various are the evasions and contortions resorted to by these dopes in their efforts to make the best of the new law. [*JAMA 'The Nostrum Evil']

This 1904+ campaign against 'cocaine' (to confuse the public about the vast difference between dilute and ultraconcentrated drug-dosing- try sniffing Blast caffeine instead of drinking Coffee) centered around the Harvey Wiley AMA-APhA campaign against the substances 'habit-forming' as what people choose to consume regularly and hence the greatest market threats to their alliance of synthetic pharamceuticles and Tobacco cigarettes- an alliance marked by several decades of medical journals featuring cigarettes advertisements with doctors implying the 'healthiness' of cigarettes. 

This campaign included the AMA-APhA 'model legislation' campaign in the various State legislatives to enact prohibitions upon foods containing any amount of cocaine, and to require a non refillable prescription for any such drug products. 

On the federal level this included the efforts within the U.S. Congress to 'amend' the 1906 Act, leading to what became the Harrison Act, signed into 'law' December 17, 1914. 

Internationally it included U.S. State Department participation in this agricultural racketerring via the 'Opium Convention' scheme, with the ultimate goal of getting other nations to ban low dose dilute cocaine, as well as decieving the Emperor of China.

This all came upon the heels of the USDA's experimentation in assessing the commercial potential of Coca and other drug crops as domestic U.S. agriculture, likely confirming U.S. domestic Coca's requirement of greehouses- making it costlier then say Tobacco.

It is my opinion that the Coca plant is adapted for culture in many countries where it is now unknown. Among the countries where it would be well to experiment with it are Guatemala, Mexico, the East and West Indies, India, Southern China, potions of Africa, and possibly India. It is doubtful if it would grow in any portion of the United States. Requiring an average temperature of at least 70o, the only districts at all suited would be Florida and Southern Texas [this was written before the 1898 U.S. acquisition of the Kingdom of Hawaii]; and it is highly probable that proximity to the sea-coast at so low an altitude would prove fatal. Nor would irrigation prove adequate in those countries possessing a long dry season. The plants must not only have an abundant supply of water at the roots; they must be bathed in a humid atmosphere for the greater portion of the year. But from what I have read of some of the countries above named, I am confident that the plant would there find a congenial home. Jamaica offers especially hopeful conditions. U.S. William Martindate, p 37 1892 book Coca and Cocaine: [see: Journal of a Voyage on the Amazon and Rio Negro, Hooker's Journal Of Botany, vol. 1853, p. 212; Therapeutic Gazette, January 1886, p. 14 Pharmacy Journal 1886, p.705]

January 10, 1904 issue of The Boston Sunday Globe ‘Uncle Sam’s poison Farm.’

‘Government Conducts a Novel Industry on the Potomac Flats- plants which yield the most powerful and valuable drugs known to science- will start growing opium growing, too, in Texas’.

This experiment ended at roughly the time that the U.S.D.A. adopted its stance against Coca in food and drug products, which was mere months after the U.S.A. aquired control over the construction of the Panama Canal, which would have drastically shortened the shipping routes of Coca from the Peruvian coast to North Atlantic markets, and which was completed and opened for traffic in 1914- the year of the Harrison 'Narcotics' Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal

  

Standard histories often fail to get beyond the sensationalist newspaper claims regarding the use of 'cocaine' by Blacks.

Overlooking the Pharma-Tobacco Connection

For Coca was already being seen as a market alternative to other stimulants, such as Coffee/caffeine, and particularly to Tobacco, at least since sometime after the initial apparance of Vin Mariani.

Initially sold as an energizer for overworked, overstressed Parisian opera performers, and inspiring other such Coca leaf derived herbal products as other Coca beverages, lozenges, Vin Mariani was found to have numerious therapeutic virtues:

“I have also employed it in cases, happily rare in our army, of chronic alcoholism resulting from the abuse of brandy, absinthe or strong liquors. The produced all the excitement sought by drinkers, but had at the same time a sedative influence on their nervous systems. I have frequently seen hardened drinkers renounce their fatal habit and return to a healthy condition." "I have also used to save smokers of exaggerated habits, from nicotinism. A few glasses of taken in small doses, either pure or mixed with water, acted as a substitute for pipes and cigars, because the smokers found in it the cerebral excitement which they sought in tobacco, wholly preserving their intellectual faculties." -- Dr. Liberman and Villeneuve

And also with smoking Coca leaves.

According to an article by Dr. F.E. Stewart in the September 19, 1885 Philadelphia Medical Times, about a newer form of Coca leaf products introduced by the 1880s- Coca leaf smokables- cigars, cheroots and even cigarettes.

"Coca has been used with great success in the treatment of the opium habit, it is also an excellent substitute for Tobacco [emphasis added]. It has been successfully used in dyspepsia, flatulency, colic, gastralgia, enteralgia, hysteria, hypochondria, spinal irritation, idiopathic convulsions , nervous erethism, and in the debility following severe acute affections. As it is a valuable restorative agent, checking tissue-waste, it is also a useful remedy in consumption [?] and wasting diseases generally. It is also of value in the nervous forms of sick-headache, migraine. It is also said to be an aphrodisiac." -- Dr. F.E. Stewart appearing in the September 19, 1885 Philadelphia Medical Times

Reporting on several cases of experiences with smoking Coca, Stewart found that most found them useful, with a high percentage finding Coca cigars as useful for stemming depression -- the "blues" -- and as a mild stimulant. Citing one example of a leading Wilmington, Delaware physician:

"After dinner, he smoked a couple of the cigars, with the effect that the blues were expelled and he felt the exhilarating effect of the drug in the same manner as after a dose of the wine. It is his opinion that the effect of the cigars is milder than that of the wine, but he is satisfied that he experienced the peculiar power of the coca by smoking it."

 Citing others, a man suffering dyspepsia -- a digestive disorder -- and its attendant depression:

"smoked the cigars...the result being to dispel the depressed feeling and remove the fullness experienced after each meal. Repeated experiments confirm this. As coca is said to stimulate the gastric nerves and greatly facilitate digestion, the above experiment seems to prove that the cigar has a similar effect."

These experiments included Dr. Stewart's own use. Writing upon his personal discovery of Coca leaf smoking as a treatment for hay fever:

Personally, I have found the effect of smoking coca leaves to bear out the statement that the drug produces a general excitation of the circulatory and nervous systems. Smoking and inhaling the smoke of one or two cigars will increase my own pulse rate some eight or ten beats to the minute.

It certainly relieves the scene of fatigue. Smoked at night, in my own case and in the cases of several of my patients, it produces wakefulness similar to strong coffee. The exaltation produced by it does not seem to be followed by any feeling of languor or depression. I find it a relief after a full meal, like a good tobacco cigar. It seems to impart increased vigor to the muscular system as well to the intellect, with an indescribable feeling of satisfaction. I have never experienced any intoxicating effects from smoking it.

Dr. Bartholow says that coca, as in the case with tea and coffee, acts as an indirect nutrient by checking waste, and hence a less amount of food is necessary to maintain the bodily functions; and as I have just learned, in a letter from Messrs. Parke, Davis and Company, that "a Mr. Stevens, a citizen of Abilene, Kansas, who was afflicted with hay fever, and was about to go to the mountains, has concluded to remain at home, having obtained relief from the use of cigarettes of coca. Every morning he uses a cigarette and perfect relief. He uses three per day.

And with Coca chewing gum, such as Coca-Bola.

After many trials I succeeded in having the coca put up as a masticatory in the form of plugs like tobacco. These were made at my suggestion by C.L. Mitchell, M.D. & Co., Pharmaceutical Chemists, of Ninth and Race Streets, Philadelphia. I have given this preparation the name of “Coca-Bola” from coca and bolus, a mass. Each plug is about the size of an ordinary plug of chewing tobacco, and contains about 200 grains (nearly half its weight) of coca leaves, besides a small quantity each of tea, coffee and coinchona bark. Each plug is marked off for convenience into squares, each square containing about 16 grains of coca leaves; this quantity is about sufficient for a single dose or chew and even a smaller portion my suffice. It is to be thoroughly masticated in the same manner when chewing tobacco, the saliva being swallowed, not ejected as in tobacco chewing. After the mass has been masticated for some time and the virtues of the coca leaf pretty well extracted, the residue is to be ejected. A chew of the “Coca-bola” take in this manner occasionally throughout the day will generally completely satisfy the craving for stimulants, and at the same time remove any feeling of depression or fatigue. The addition of the tea and coffee seem to assist considerably the sustaining and stimulating effect of the coca leaves without producing any injurious after effects.

The advantages of this method of administering were found to be many and removed completely all the difficulties previously referred to. It contained no alcohol, did not require the use of the objectionable bottle and spoon, was exceeding convenient, and as it so closely resembled tobacco, its continued use excited no remark. Besides it could be easily carried in the vest pocket and was always at hand when needed.

By the use of the “Coca-bola,” in the treatment of the class of cases previously referred to , we substitute for the objectionable habit of drinking liquor the harmless use of coca. So free is it from all injurious effects that I can say that in my opinion no greater boon could be conferred on humanity that in the conversion of all alcohol drinkers into coca chewers. At my request, Dr. Mitchell has now prepared the “Coca-bola” for sale and will shortly place it on the market, when I would ask its careful trial by such of my professional brethren as are interested in the treatment of this class of cases.

Coca-Bola will also be found to be a very valuable substitute for tobacco, especially in the treatment of those who are suffering from the pernicious effects of its excessive use in the habit of chewing. It is a well known fact in the treatment of the cases that the greatest obstacle, and the one which meets the physician at the very outset, is the difficulty experienced in providing a suitable substitute for the offending “quid.” The chewing of tobacco, soon leads almost unconsciously to the formation of a habit of chewing, and when the mouth becomes accustomed to the frequent regularity of the movements of mastication, and the continued presence of a foreign body, the action becomes in a certain sense an involuntary one, and any interruption or break in its regular performance adds a disturbing element which greatly enhances the depression naturally resulting from the withdrawal of the physiological stimulus of the tobacco. A habit soon becomes a second nature, and a habitual chewer of tobacco derives as much satisfaction, and from the “company” of the “chew”, to which he had accustomed himself, as he does from the drug itself.

The use of tobacco in chewing or smoking, as well as the frequent drinking of liquor, produces a catarrhal condition of the mouth which also adds to the desire for the presence of the quid. The oral mucosa are in a state of sub-acute congestion, and while the first result of the habit is to stimulate their secretions, this is soon followed by catarrhal changes, whereby the saliva and other juices become greatly diminished in quantity. An uncomfortable feeling of dryness and heat in the mouth soon results, only alleviated by the employment of the alcohol, or the tobacco. To relieve this condition of affairs in many different "tobacco substitutes" have been recommended, but with very little success. They are generally compounds containing large quantities of licorice-root, and while they partly satisfy the taste, they do not supply any stimulus or sustaining agent to take the place of the refreshing and almost nourishing tobacco, neither do they allay the congestion of the mouth.

Coca leaves should, theoretically, be an excellent substitute for tobacco.

They have an agreeable, bitter aromatic taste when chewed in the mouth; they greatly diminish the blood supply in the superficial capillaries of the mucous membrane, and should thus relieve the congestion of the oral mucosa; and the general tonic, stimulating and sustaining powers of the drug should render it a suitable and innocent substitute to take the place of tobacco. Moreover, it leaves behind it no injurious after effects, and its use can be at any time suspended after the patient has lost his desire for the former drug. When, therefore, the coca leaves can be presented in the form of a masticatory, and satisfy both the physiological requirements of the case and the "habit" of the chewer, it would seem as if every condition for a perfect substitute for chewing tobacco had been fulfilled. – C.L. Mitchell, M.D. in "Clinical Notes".http://books.google.com/books?id=vzj0SGBjK_4C&pg=PA36-IA4&lpg=PA36-IA4&dq=coca+substitution+for+tobacco&source=bl&ots=TV6P-OVKGV&sig=phe_-y4Ai7oex5X14nmFWgFOWPE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=D1APUJ2KJIa36wGR2oDwBw&ved=0CFMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=coca%20substitution%20for%20tobacco&f=false

     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-to-combat-opiate-alcohol-and.html
     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2011/04/coca-as-tobacco-habit-cure.html
     http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/criminal-mercantilism-public-health.html

Meanwhile attempts were made to hide Tobacco addiction with claims that Tobacco cigarettes were being laced with Opium in order to make them more habituating, as if the more physically addictive substance, Tobacco needed such.  Or if this was even ethical, given what was already known on the very floor of the U.S. Congress as it debated the 1914 Harrison 'Narcotics' Act.

      ... there are tens of thousands of people in the United States who die every year from the excessive use of cigarettes;    and yet I find Senators still pulling away at the cigarette as though t were a perfectly harmless thing. I believe the Senator will agree with me that there are many thousands of people who die from what is called tobacco cancer, a cancerous growth affecting the throat from overuse of cigars; and we find perhaps 60 percent of the Senators pulling away at the cigar as unconcerned as though no one were dying as a result of these cigars...
U.S. Congress, Senator Porter James McCumber (R) North Dakota, August 15, 1914

With Tobacco so protected by the 1906 Food and Drug, and the 1914 Harrison Acts, cigarette manufacturers were not only free of the market competition of herbal Opium and Coca leaf products, they were additionally free to be exempt from the basic requiring of labeling of the ingrediants of their cigarettes, required for anything else except alcoholic beverages.

Powder cocaine and heroin could become the new scapegoat used to 'justify' this repression, forgetting the numerous benifits and safety of Opium and Coca as plant drugs compared to the refined ultraconcentrates favored by prohibition, along with with the officially protected cigarettes.

In each major category of intoxicant used by our species, there appear to be one or two drug plants that researchers have noted, are more controllable, hence safer, than all the other plants or synthetics in that category. Coca leaf stands out among all the stimulants, licit and illicit, as the easiest to control and the one least likely to produce toxicity or dependency.  http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/03/coca-leaf-stands-out-among-all.html

And this is what the USDA was able to ban, for the sake of protecting the most dangerous option of Virginia Bright Leaf Tobacco, particularly as cigarettes, more physically addictive then heroin, and way more intrinsically harmful -- imagine taking nicotine as heroin is customerily under prohibition -- taking nearly half a million lives annually within just the U.S.A.

Protecting Cigarette Ingrediant Secrecy

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-preceeding-post-was-previously.html

Adulterated, Mis-Branded Cigarettes
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/adulterated-tobacco-cigarettes.html

Criminal Virginia Bright Leaf Addiction Racketteering

http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/04/criminal-virginia-bright-leaf.html

And that, along with alcoholic beverages are the only two class of consumables exempt from retail product labeling requirements- you can't even find labling informing if your beverage is sweetened with regular sugar or HFCS.

Yet we have this empire of a 'drug war' to deny us Opium and Coca, perverting them into concentrated heroin and cocaine, for the sake of protecting all of that space behind cash register counters everywhere for cigarettes.

That's some drug war.

Production of Cigarettes 1880 - 1968
From Licit & Illicit Drugs, by Edward M. Brecher and Consumers Reports at page 230 showing upturns in cigarette production, following the times of the 1906, 1914 and 1937 U.S. 'drug control laws'

Missing the Opportunity
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2012/08/missing-opportunity.html

Drug Policy Reform Subverted by Cigarette Industry Influence?
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2010/07/peter-lewis-ira-glasser-is-waste-of.html

AMA self styled 'quackbuster' shilled for big Tobacco
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2015/03/self-styled-quackbuster-jama-editor-dr.html

Pharma Market Protection- confirmed by No on 3 in Massachusetts

No on 3- an anti MJ legalization lobbyist group reveals prohibition is all about Pharmaceutical market protection- telling us that Sativex is ok while supporting maintaining the ban on natural MJ

http://mavotenoonquestion3.com/the-joke-is-on-us-or-is-it/

The first video is a throw back to major quacks as Harvey Wiley who banned the non carcinogenic Opium and Coca leaf, for the sake of protecting markets in pharmaceuticles and cigarettes. Plants as medicine are bad- nevermind the Bible's Book of Genesis. But pharmaceuticals are good- so much so that they must be protected by mis-defining people possessing or growing their own as "crime". Such is the big money reason behind such sorry excuses of politicans as Obama-Romney's contempt for public opinion and basic decency, debasing the judicary as accomplices to a costly and ongoing criminal mercantilism.

Harvey Wiley Sugar Legacy

New York City's Mayor Bloomberg seeks to ban certain establishments from offering sugared drink sizes above 16 ounces.  No word how this shall impact my 32 ounce McDonald's *half* sweetened, *half* unsweetened habit which gives me the larger drink but with the limit of the 16 ounce size sweetened.  No mention is given to the sugar-high fructose corn syrup issue.

This makes me wonder about the per-cigarette mercantilism days -- aka the early 1900s cocaine demonification scares of the infamous USDA-AMA-APhA drug racketeering to get people to fear cocaine in any form in order to clear the way for the increased marketing of Tobacco cigarettes -- when Coca Cola and other such soft drinks contained cocaine.  Small amounts of cocaine, often 3-4 milligrams per fluid ounce, or 6 or 7 milligrams per fluid ounce as in Coca wines such as Vin Mariani.

Do the math.  If say a Coca leaf extract or even isolated cocaine beverages contained for the sake of argument 1.5 milligrams per fluid ounce, the amount cited by Stephen Karch for Coca-Cola: 

12 milligrams in the 8 ounce drink; 

18 mg in the 12 ounce drink; 

24 mg in the 16 ounce; 

48 in the 32; and 

96mg in the 64 ounce.  

Such an era came when soft drink sizes were relatively low- in the 8 ounce/12mg cocaine to 12 ounce/18 mg cocaine range; without or with caffeine, such as Coca-Cola.

Now do the logic.  Cocaine is not just a stimulant.  Cocaine is also an anesthetic- drink a cocaine containing beverage  and one does not simply get a mild stimulant effect, one's stomach numbs out and one looses an appetite for more, making it somewhat self limiting.  Try it yourself with some Coca tea (I do NOT recommend using street cocaine unless perhaps one is a sufficiently trained pharmacist), made with say 4 or 5 bags per large cup and you will find it way less swill-able than a standard caffeine beverage or water.   

Makes me wonder how much excessive consumption of sugar was initiated by removing the whole coca-cocaine alkaloid from soft drinks, removing the "I am full signal" so people would drink larger servings.

I am sure there is a whole science within the food and drug and beverage industry to encourage excessive consumption, as with MSG type 'doping', and the burn additives in cigarettes.

Perhaps there's a trove of secreted research of 'poison squad" USDA related research on the interactions between the consumption of a range of products, involving a whole range of agricultural products, including all sorts of "habit-forming" things including sugar, soft drinks, Coffee, tea, and of course Coca and of Tobacco.  Research showing the effects of each taken separately, or together, to see how they interact, particularly drugs with overlapping uses: caffeine, cocaine, and nicotine; beverages, chewables and various forms of smokes.  Yes, we not only had cocainated soft drinks (as well as Coca Wines as Vin Mariani), we had Coca leaf cigars, cheroots and cigarettes- either alone or blended some way with Tobacco, and described as roughly equivalent in potency to drinking Coffee. 

Such as that showing that Coca soft drinks were shackling the sales growth of mass machine produced Tobacco cigarettes - the Bonsack machine was patented in 1881, yet the sales growth was relatively slow until 1907 with the irresponsible elimination of cocaine from beverages, eliminating the competition to and potential addiction relief potential from Tobacco.

British and French and North Americans Examine Coca: 1870s-1880s
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.fr/2008/03/british-and-french-and-north-americans.html


Sugar Promoter Harvey Washington Wiley
http://freedomofmedicineanddiet.blogspot.com/2008/08/sugar-pusher-harvey-wiley.html

Wiley Helped Exclude Whisky & Brandy from Pharmacopeia

Reported in The American Journal of Clinical Medicine, vol 22, issue 8 August 1915

WHISKY AND BRANDY EXCLUDED FROM THE PHARMACOPEIA

Too late for editorial comment in this number of Clinical Medicine comes the news that the Committee of Revision of the United States Pharmacopeia has decided, by a vote of 26 to 24, to exclude whisky and brandy from the new edition of the Pharmacopeia, now nearly complete. It is said that this action is due largely to the work of Dr. Harvey W. Wiley.

We have very little respect for alcohol as a medicine, used in any form; we know there are better stimulants, and better sedatives. But—isn't it a "drug," after all? Isn't it used habitually as a "medicine" by thousands of clean, skilful, able physicians? If so, should it not be recognized as a drug, and proper standards of strength and purity, and suitable directions regarding adulterants be provided for the protection of the physician, the guidance of the pharmacist, and the welfare of the patient?

Just what the status of whisky and brandy will be, legally, especially as regards sales by the pharmacist, we are not yet prepared to say. There will be many expressions of opinion on this subject during the next few months, and they will be given a hearing later, in these pages. Perhaps this decision on the part of the Committee of Revision may help to drive home another nail in the coffin of old Ring Alcohol. Let us hope so.

http://books.google.com/books?id=4qFEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA782&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U2MP8qhR6S_CzQo6JBf-lZtqfiHyw&ci=118%2C610%2C421%2C748&edge=0

HW Wiley JH Covington Subversion of 1st Amendment on Foods & Drugs

USDA-AMA-APhA Racketeering

James Harry Covington founded the law firm Covington & Burling

"The proof of intention in the criminal law," he said "does not mean the metaphysical reading of a man's mind. Specific proof of intent is not necessary; it may be established by evidence of attending facts and circumstances, and therefore the Government can easily show that a false statement on a label regarding a drug is one from which fraudulent intent may be implied. Conviction in all proper cases will be consequently comparatively sure."------ James Harry Covington

http://www.quackwatch.com/13Hx/MM/03.html

excerpt

The misbranding section of the law did not explicitly refer to curative promises. A food or drug article was misbranded, the law stated, "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." Wiley and Kebler, in their initial regulations, had aimed this general clause directly at unwarranted assertions that promised relief or cure. At the time questions were raised about the Bureau's interpretation. In view of the differences of opinion prevailing over matters therapeutical, a drug editor suggested, "it will be interesting to know who is to be judge of the truth or falsity of the therapeutical claims which may be made." [16] Certainly among medical practitioners an ancient therapeutic debate had reached a new and bitter stage. In the American Medical Association's effort to improve standards, Association spokesmen were condemning the healing practices of various sects and cults [17]. These groups fought back with vigor, defending their therapies and opposing the AMA's effort to enforce therapeutic monopoly. While such a debate was going on, could Wiley and Kebler, perusing nostrum labels, find firm scientific grounds on which to approve or reject? They themselves took this for granted and, during the first years of the law, so did the trade. Many manufacturers toned down their therapeutic claims. Others did not, but when hauled into court admitted Wiley's view of the law's applicability by pleading guilty [18].

Out in Kansas City an eclectic physician named Johnson decided on a different legal course. He had been vending an assortment of tablets and liquids as "Dr. Johnson's Mild Combination Treatment for Cancer." For this purpose, of course, the concoctions were worthless. Johnson fulfilled the law's requirements as to the accurate labeling of his ingredients. It was solely against his false curative promises that the government brought its suit. The medicine man's lawyers moved to quash the indictment, pleading that Congress had not intended the law to forbid such practices. When the case had run its course, the Supreme Court had agreed. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the decision, a tortuous exploration of grammatical construction that could find no proper link between the prohibition of false labeling and assertions of healing potency. Congress was not apt to legislate, Holmes argued, in the debatable realm of what could cure and what could not. This would "distort the uses of its constitutional power to establishing criteria in regions where opinions are far apart." [19]

Charles Evans Hughes wrote a vigorous dissent. His study of the grammar of the law revealed the connection Holmes could not see. He cited the act's legislative history to show that Congress had indeed intended a prohibition of therapeutic nonsense on nostrum labels. Even the makers of medicines had generally assumed the law to be so written, Hughes pointed out, since so many had promptly entered pleas of guilt. Holmes had "impressively described," the dissenting justice said, the conflict that did indeed exist between schools of medicine and the difficulty of legislating in such an uncertain area. "But granting the wide domain of opinion," he added, "and allowing the broadest range to the conflict of medical views, there still remains a field in which statements as to the curative properties are downright falsehoods and in no sense expressions of judgment. This field I believe this statute covers." This type of downright falsehood was what Johnson had placed on the labels of his cancer cure.

But Holmes had the majority with him. The decision, wrote an incensed George Creel, was "first aid to fraud and murder," leaving the nostrum provisions of the law with "as much bite as a canton flannel dog." Wiley was angry. Maybe Holmes understood his opinion, the chief chemist said. I don't. All I can make out is that it gives anyone the right to lie about drugs whenever he feels like it." Wiley preferred to stand with Hughes. "He disagreed," the chemist added bitterly, "probably, because he had not been on the bench long enough to know better." [20]

The decision in the Johnson case, said President Taft, meant that over 150 cases of the same type pending in the courts, "involving some of the rankest frauds by which the American people were ever deceived," would have to be dismissed. He urged the Congress promptly to pass a law to plug the hole. Holmes had made clear—and Hughes had agreed—that "any attempt to legislate against mere expressions of opinion would be abortive." Thus the new law should proscribe only "knowingly false misstatements of fact as to the effect of the preparations." Such a measure, the President was persuaded, would control "the greater part of the evil." [21]

Congressman Swagar Sherley of Kentucky introduced a bill, and it was passed by Congress "without any blare of trumpets." The amendment to the food and drug law declared an article misbranded "if its package or label shall bear or contain any statement, design, or device regarding the curative or therapeutic effect of such article or any of the ingredients or substances contained therein, which is false and fraudulent." [22]

In view of the Johnson decision, "false and fraudulent" was as strong a phrase as Congress could very well enact. But would proving fraud be such an impossible task as to offer quackery an open road? Congressman Sherley acknowledged this hazard: "very frequently," he said, the government would have difficulty "in convicting the guilty man." A fellow Congressman, James Covington of Maryland, foresaw no untoward danger. "The proof of intention in the criminal law," he said "does not mean the metaphysical reading of a man's mind. Specific proof of intent is not necessary; it may be established by evidence of attending facts and circumstances, and therefore the Government can easily show that a false statement on a label regarding a drug is one from which fraudulent intent may be implied. Conviction in all proper cases will be consequently comparatively sure." [23]

Wiley was less cheerful. The dangers Congressman Sherley saw as likely, Wiley viewed as certain. The word "fraudulent" in the amendment, he said, was a "joker" which would nullify the law's intent. Congress had "given the manufacturers of fake cure-alls another lease on life and enabled the roots of fraud and corruption to sink deeper into the soil of protective legislation-protective to vested interests, not to public welfare." But enforcing the Sherley Amendment was not to be Harvey Washington Wiley's responsibility. Five months before Taft signed the law, Wiley had resigned his post as chief of the Bureau of Chemistry. The decision had been, perhaps, impending since 1906. The talents required for crusading in behalf of a law are not the same talents required for enforcing it. The measure was a pioneering one, and weaknesses in drafting became apparent, especially a lack of clarity as to enforcement responsibilities. Wiley's categorical stand against food preservatives antagonized industries with great political power, and this power they brought to bear. President Roosevelt, becoming unsure of Wiley's science, created checks upon his single-banded action within the Bureau which hamstrung the chief chemist. Bitter internecine warfare developed which, in Taft's administration, led to a charge of malfeasance against Wiley. Although he was vindicated by the President, Wiley felt that Taft should then have proceeded to oust his enemies and restore his authority. This the President did not do. Embittered, tired of fruitless fighting, and anxious to increase his income because of his recent marriage, Wiley quit [24].

In the whole protracted struggle, patent medicines played almost no part at all. One of Wiley's opponents within the Department of Agriculture had chided the chemist for working up weak food cases when so many strong cases might be developed against vicious nostrums sold within "the shadow of the National Capitol." Granted that the complaint possessed some merit, it has all the earmarks of a blow aimed at embarrassing Wiley in the continuing battle. At any rate, the Johnson case had already been decided against the government in the District Court [25]

Freemason T Roosevelt Approved Wiley 1906 'Pure Food and Drugs Act'

Freemason Theodore Roosevelt
establishing USDA authority to steer agricultural-pharma mercantilism, via 1906 U.S. Pure Foods & Drugs Act of Harvey Washington Wiley


Freemasonry responsible for treasonous subversion of freedom of diet and medicine for tobacco-cigarette/pharmaceutical racketeering: 100 million lives and countless years of the waste of the drug war

http://limasons.blogspot.com/2006/07/theodore-roosevelt-president-and-mason.html

By W:.Patrick Bellotti, Past Master Meridian Lodge 691

THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1858-1919)
Twenty-sixth President (1901-1909)


Theodore Roosevelt is known as one of the greatest American Presidents this country has known. He was primarily known as a great conservationist and started the National Park System. He did renovations to the White House and imprinted a “can-do” attitude which helped the population face the challenges of the new 20th Century.

Among all these things, Theodore Roosevelt was also an active Mason who exemplified the spirit and brotherhood of Masonry while serving as President. He believed in Masonry until his death.

I did some research and thought I would share some of these facts with you in this Blog.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S MASONIC RECORD

Brother Theodore Roosevelt was initiated: January 2, 1901, Matinecock Lodge No. 806, Oyster Bay, New York. Brother and President Roosevelt visited the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania (in its present home, the Masonic Temple at One North Broad Street) on November 5, 1902, for the Celebration of the Sesqui-Centennial of Brother George Washington's Initiation into Freemasonry. Governor of New York, 1899-1901. Brother and President Roosevelt issued an Executive Order, dated, October 17, 1901 changing the name of the "Executive Mansion" to the "White House".

Theodore Roosevelt, said in 1902, "One of the things that attracted me so greatly to Masonry . . . was that it really did live up to what we, as a government, are pledged to -- of treating each man on his merits as a Man"

The following is an excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s obituary which was published upon his death. His obituary further validated his love and commitment to Masonry.

“Colonel Roosevelt was a member of the local lodge of Masons, and never failed to keep up his interest in it. He had made a habit for many years of visiting Masonic lodges wherever he went, as a member of the Oyster Bay lodge, and, returning, to tell his brother Masons here of his visits. He found Masonic lodges when he was in Africa at Nairobi, and in South America he found a lodge on the Asuncion River. The Masons here knew from Colonel Roosevelt of the doings of Masonic lodges in all parts of the world. The members of the local lodge suggested a Masonic funeral yesterday, but this was dropped when the wishes of the family became known.”

While a member of Matinecock Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt resided and raised his family in a beautiful home there which he called Sagamore Hill. I recommend that any Mason take the tour of this beautiful home which is brimming with historical significance. Today this residence is run by the National Park Service which gives public tours.

If I sound biased about Theodore Roosevelt, it is with good cause as I am proud to say that in 2001 I was a recipient of the Theodore Roosevelt Award and I personally was given a tour of his home. It was a fascinating and unforgettable experience for me which I will never forget.

For a more in depth study of Roosevelt’s Lodge service, you can read the web page taken from the web site for Matinecock Lodge which is located in Roosevelt’s hometown of Oyster Bay, New York. I put this web address here for your convenience.

http://www.matinecock.org/portal/desktopdefault.aspx?tabindex=2&tabid=23&item=10

Wiley- Protector of the Status Quo: don't let youth learn of alternatives to Tobacco, Coffee etc

Wiley opposed adding caffeine-containing beverages other then those containing it naturally- aka coffee or tea, yet was unequivocaly against cocaine containing beverages whether using the isolated alakoid or Coca Leaf Extract

Wiley himself freely admitted his obedience to the underlying fears of the agenda of maintaining the status quo, as he did in a speech defining drug addiction:

What is a drug habit? .... The habit-forming drugs which are most extensively used are alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. If we class as drug addicts those who have acquired the habit for one or more of these drugs the number of them in the United States would be very close to half or two-thirds of the population. When we speak of drug addicts, however, we usually have in mind a more restricted sense and refer rather to those who are slaves to opium or the coca leaf and their derivatives. ... I would not favor of any restrictive legislation respecting tobacco and tea and coffee, except in so far as children are concerned. [box 201]