2nd Issue,
July, 1961

WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

John Birch Society
To List Comsymps

BALTIMORE SUN

The John Birch Society has asked its members to help draw
up a list of the country’s “leading Comsymps, Socialists and lib-
erals.” What is a Comsymp? In the Birch Society lexicon, it is a
Communist sympathizer. Robert H. W. Welsh, Jr., founder of
the organization, has said that “Comsymps” is a “beautiful word
because you don’t have to say how much the person is a Com-
munist and how much he is a sympathizer.”

That is, you can smear people without knowing exactly what
you are talking about.

o judge from the known thinking of some Birch Society
members, the list is likely to include also a good many Sympmets,
persons who favor metropolitan government: fluorincs, those who
approve of water fluoridation and the income tax; phildags,
friends of the United Nations Secretary General, and, most
dangerous of all, peachnos, persons who call themselves citizens
and yet are opposed to having the Chief Justice of the United
States impeached.

Somewhere, there must be lists more dependable.

On Drug Probe

Saskatchewan Urges
More Public Control

A broadening of public control along five general lines to en-
sure reasonable prices and high standards of quality and safety
for prescription drugs was proposed by the government of Sas-
katchewan in its submission to the Restrictive Trade Practices
Commission sitting in this city.

The brief, presented by Hon.
Walter Erb, Minister of Public
Health, recommended the following:

1, Provision for more inspection
to provide greater assurance
that drugs are of uniform qual-
ity and safety.

Establishment of a national
research laboratory to accomp-
lish the two-fold purpose of
analyzing existing drugs and

vided by pharmacists”.
Price Reduction

The attack at the manufacturers’
level would be conducted “with a
view to obtaining reductions in prices
to the pharmacists which could then
be passed on to the public”.

The brief pointed out that the
estimated per capita cost of prescrip-
tions sold in the province has climbed
- from $3.84 in 1954 to $8.06 in 1959.
new drugs in order to make | This is somewhat above the Canadian
authoritative reports and to average.
conduct basic research. Bron

~

an essentially ameliorative

3. The setting up of a system of [role drugs have come to occupy a
control over drug prices. central curative position in the treat-
4. Enactment of measures to in- | ment of illness, the brief stated. “In

hibit high-pressure promotion

many cases we have seen the de-
of drugs.

velopment of products of astonishing
Enactment of measures to en- | power. This advance has come about
courage wider use of generic | almost exclusively in the category

names for drugs in place of | of drugs available only on prescrip-
brand names, tion.”

oH

With perhaps 90 per cent of pre-
cription drugs formulated by drug
manufacturers, the brief noted the
disturbing signs of an increasing
commercialism “in its worst sense”
in the drug industry.

The brief stated that this five-fold
approach would centre the attack on
the problem at the manufacturers’
level because “there is much merit in
a policy of utilizing the facilities pro-

Duplication Common

It quotes a statement given at the
1960 annual meeting of the American
Public Health Association: “The
huge volume of prescription products
is produced and marketed in the same
atmosphere that produces a rapid
turnover in automobile models and
women’s styles. Despite exceptions,
premature and excessive promotion
of drugs, inadequate investigation and
unnecessary, confusing duplication
are common.”

It is this particular aspect of the
drug industry, the brief said, and the
unfortunate consequences that flow
from it that “in our view urgently
require public action. We believe
there must be a fundamental change
in the philosophy and approach of the
drug industry.”

Is Fine
By Us

Woman reporter Iris Ashley of
London’s Daily Express said she
is against dresses cut low in the
back because “I would rather
influence the man I’m talking to
than the one standing behind
me,”

Ford Party
Costs
$250,000

Just as auto negotiations got
under way, Mr. Henry Ford II
gave a coming-out party for his
debutante daughter. The press re-
ported that the affair was a De-
troit gala and that it cost a cool
quarter of a million.

Financial columnist J. A. Living-
ston bemoaned the expenditure be-
cause he felt that labour would
point to it as “conspicuous con-
sumption”. His cure was simple:
have 10 parties at $25,000 a throw
instead of just one big “wing-

Mr. Ford is without doubt en-
titled to spend his money as he
sees fit, although this kind of out-
lay gives a hollow ring to his cries
of inflation at nickel or dime wage
increases. Further, the ability of
the auto magnate to spend this
kind of money upon a single affair
makes the propaganda about the
over-taxed rich seem silly.

Building Contomotor:
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Cousins
Gives
Notice

Frank Cousins, spearhead of
the British labour movement’s
anti-H-bomb legions, has created
a major dilemma for Britain’s
8.25 million-member Trades
Union Congress.

His 1.3 million-member Transport
and General Workers’ Union, Brit-
ain’s biggest, gave notice that at the
TUC annual assembly at Portsmouth
in September it will again put for-
ward its six-point anti-nuclear reso-
lution.

The resolution was passed last

Profit-Sharing Plan
Oftered To U.A.W.

American Motors Corporation
has offered the United Auto
Workers union a profit-sharing
wage plan and a_ seven-cent
hourly wage increase annually
over the next three years
In exchange, American Motors
asked the UAW to give up cost-of-
living allowance and annual improve-
ment factor clauses in their current
contract expiring Sept. 7.

AMC’s was the first settlement

offer handed the UAW in negoti-
ations started a month ago with the
auto industry. In 1958 profit-sharing
was the union’s principal, all-out goal
but it failed to get anywhere.

AMC would set aside the first 10
per cent of profits before taxes for its
stockholders, then set aside the next
10 per cent to what it termed a “pro-
gressive sharing fund for represented
hourly-rated union employees.”

year and subsequently endorsed by
f

the Labour party’s annual confer-| pon

ence.
It completely rejects any defence
policy based on the threat to use

strategic or tactical nuclear wea-
s

Parliamentary Labour party policy
says the West must keep the bomb
so long as Russia has it.

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