Revisiting 'The origins of compulsory drug prescriptions'

H.M. Marks

American Journal of Public Health, 1995, vol. 85, issue 1, 109-115

Abstract: It has been argued that today's prescription drug market originated in the arbitrary acts of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which in 1938 issued regulations creating a class of drugs that could be sold by prescription only. On the basis of the FDA's administrative records, I argue that the 1938 regulations on prescription drug labeling were initiated by industry and then agreed to by the FDA; that contemporaries understood and accepted the reasons for restricting the use of certain drugs; and that the subsequent evolution of these regulations is best understood as an FDA effort to limit industry abuses of the prescription labeling system. This decade- long war of position ended when drug manufacturers persuaded the US Congress to enshrine their version of prescription labeling in law in a highly politicized struggle over government's role in the economy.

Date: 1995
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1995:85:1:109-115_4

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