Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1911 — Only the Drug Stores May Sell Drugs [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Only the Drug Stores May Sell Drugs

TOPEKA, KAN. —Hereafter when a Kansan wants to buy a bottle of vaseline or a cake of medicated soap he will have to go to a drug store. If one wants two sheets of fly paper or a package of fly poison, he cannot run around to the corner grocery and get It charged on the grocery bill. He must hike to the drug store. The state board of pharmacy has ruled against the department stores and groceries selling drugs. No one has been poisoned or hurt in buying department or grocery store drugs, but the business was getting to be so big that the board decided to stop it before the business ran away. The department stores usually shave the price a little, and maybe this encouraged the ruling. The pharmacy

law prohibits anyone but a registered, pharmacist selling drugs except in rural districts, where any merchant may sell patent medicine if he-is five miles from a drug store and obtains a proper license. But department and dry goods stores have been building up a big business selling hydrogen peroxide, vaseline, carbolic acid preparations, fly paper, face powder?, tooth paste, witch hazel and dozens of other household articles. But these are drugs. They are sold as drugs and to be used as medicines, hence they come under the prohibition of the law and the state board, which has charge of enforcing the law, says that the sale of these things, and' the patent medicines by others than druggists, must cease. The state board is serving notices on all department, dry goods and grocery stores that sell fly paper and face powder that they must cease this profitable business. Some of the department stores arp preparing to fight the order on the ground that the state has no right to prohibit selling useful but harmless preparations.