Between 1879 and the end of World War 1, CPA’s legislative committee was extremely busy, first proposing a Pharmacy Act in 1879 before finally getting it passed into law in 1881. By 1908, the association had hired its first lobbyist, with one job being to interview every Senator and House member about their support for pharmacists. He also had to help defend a pharmacist for violating Connecticut’s notorious “blue laws”: the pharmacist was selling candy on Sunday!
Through legislative action, CPA tried many times to restrict the sale of drugs and medicines to only drug stores or to regulate other professions access to them. The Connecticut Medical Society was often the primary opposition to these regulations, and they were regularly defeated in the legislature.
In 1918 came the most far-reaching amendment to date of the Pharmacy Act, laying a crude foundation for the licensure laws as we know them today. Among those still in effect is the requirement that immigrant pharmacists must have a minimum of 1 year of experience in a US pharmacy before they can be licensed by the state.