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soning and the passage of this act and the
implementing legislation might alleviate
that situation in the future.
Did you or Delegate Bard intend for the
General Assembly to set up a state food
and drug administration?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Key.
DELEGATE KEY: No, I do not neces-
sarily mean that, because that is already
handled somewhat by the federal govern-
ment, but I would expect them to imple-
ment laws to take care of those situations
that are not covered by the interstate pro-
visions of the federal government.
For example, intrastate meat.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: Are not all drugs
covered by the Food and Drug Administra-
tion and do they not all have to be ap-
proved before they can be put on the
market?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Bard.
DELEGATE BARD: Delegate Case, my
illustrations dealt first with the significance
of consumer protection in all areas of life.
Toward the end of my presentation, I
answered the question in respect to why
constitutional authorization. There are some
areas in respect to the dispensing of drugs
that do get into state law, not necessarily
in terms of the particular illustration that
I gave, but you might be interested in
knowing that this very day in Congress,
there is discussion with respect to the use
of the generic description of drugs which
has direct impact on the consumer.
Now, I do not think that the particular
illustration is as important as the overrid-
ing requirements for consumer protection.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case.
DELEGATE CASE: Well, Delegate
Bard, you made the very point. The matter
is being currently discussed in Congress?
But let us go to the second of the two
examples you gave, and that is the example
of sweaters and the chemistry that was in-
volved in those. Do you propose to set up
a state Federal Trade Commission to take
care of this kind of problem?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Bard.
DELEGATE BARD: The consumer pro-
tection agency that is now in existence,
Delegate Case, and you may be familiar
with it, is one that has been placed in
existence in a federal relationship, it can
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go out of existence tomorrow, as you all
know.
We have heard testimony on the part of
those associated with them and I hold no
brief for that agency. Indeed, my own feel-
ing would be that there would be an en-
tirely different kind of relationship in re-
spect to consumer protection.
But the point is as follows: The Com-
mittee heard testimony and I would rather
that they testified on this fact that within
the few weeks that this agency has been in
existence, it has already found an over-
burdened schedule with regard to com-
plaints within the area in which the state
alone has jurisdiction vis-a-vis the consu-
mer responsibility.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Case, do
you have a further question?
DELEGATE CASE; A few more.
Delegate Bard, I am trying to reach the
rationale of your argument. Do you think
the Food and Drug Administration or the
Federal Trade Commission may go out of
business and we would need something of
this nature?
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Key.
DELEGATE KEY: I think the slant on
this has been turned maybe in the wrong
direction, Delegate Case, by the direction
of your question. We are not that much
concerned about the interstate commission
going out of business, rather we are con-
cerned with two things, first of all that for
the years that we have had our Constitu-
tion and, of course, that was alluded to
previously, the business element and the
producer has been somewhat favored and
we have had a philosophy of "Let the
Buyer Beware !"
Our contention here is that if we include
in our constitution a section worded as this
is here, that it will do something other
than provide law. It will change the atti-
tude of business persons to informe the
buyer rather than try to hide things from
him, to be fair with the buyer, rather than
try to trick him into deals.
This is the first area.
The second is that there are areas which
are not covered by interstate commerce as
we are well aware. I think one of our con-
gressman earlier said in the debates with
the Congress on the meat inspection laws
that 74 percent of all the meat slaughtered
in Maryland does not come under interstate
commerce, which means that we are eating
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