Proclamation 3826—National Poison Prevention Week, 1968

Each year, half a million Americans—most of them children—accidentally swallow substances that could kill or injure them.

Two familiar substances—medicine and household products—are among the most dangerous causes of accidental poisoning among children. Both are valuable assets in our homes—when used as directed. Yet both are a potential danger—a danger no more remote than the unknowing grasp of a small child.

The federal government, together with State and local agencies, private industry, and professional and civic organizations, has tried to alert Americans to the dangers that lie on the shelves of a careless home. Since 1962, when we first called national attention to this threat, deaths by accidental poisoning among children under five years of age has declined 20 percent.

I recently signed into law a bill to establish a National Commission on Product Safety whose job it will be to identify dangerous household products.

We must do more. We need to be much more alert to the dangers of accidental poisoning. And we need to learn more about how to treat it.

To stimulate public interest in this problem, I am designating the third week in March as National Poison Prevention Week, as requested by Congress.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning March 17, 1968, as National Poison Prevention Week.

I direct the appropriate agencies of the Federal Government, and I invite State and local governments and organizations, to participate actively in programs designed to promote better protection against accidental poisonings, particularly among children.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-eight, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and ninety-second.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON