In 1970, Richard Nixon signed into law the Poison Prevention Packaging Act (PPPA). The act was written in response to a growing number of child poisonings from unintentional ingestion of drugs and other products. The Act was successful, but a lot has changed in the last 47 years.

Back in 1970, as today, the dominant containers for pharmaceuticals in the U.S. were the bottle and vial. As the law was being written and child resistance (CR) being defined, two drastically different containers had to be regulated – the bottle, with hundreds of years of consumer experience, and the blister, having only come into the U.S. market in 1960, driven by a need for a specific dosing regimen required by a new drug for birth control.