DRINK PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 10, 12 January 1929, Page 9

DRINK PROBLEM.

DRY LAW PROBE. Hoover To Thoroughly Inquire Into Prohibition. UNBIASSED REPORT WANTED. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) (Received 11 a.m.) WASHIXGTOX, January 11. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved an increase of £5,000,000 in the fund for prohibition enforcement. The increase is to become immediately available. The Prohibition Bureau Act must be approved by the House and the Senate, a committee of which has asked the bureau for a statement showing how the increase would be spent.

The Washington correspondent of th 2 "New York World" says it is indicated that an investigation over the whole country into prohibition enforcement, and the effect of the 18th amendment ci the Constitution and the Volstead Act, with their relation to crime, will be made by the President-elect, Mr. Hoover, when he is in office.

Mr. Hoover does not want a biassed report. Therefore he prefers to name his own investigators to find out the facts.

Mr. Hoover's friends assert that he has told members of Congress that he has a definite plan to carry out his promise to name a commission to study the question in a thorough, careful and businesslike manner.

A message from Ottawa states that the United States to-day failed to obtain the consent of the Canadian Government to a proposed treaty for the use of drastic efforts to suppress the annual shipment of £20.000,000 worth of illicit liquor from the Dominion. A conference between American and Canadian officials, which was held in Ottawa for several days, ended without result. The United States wanted Canada to agree to refuse to issue papers to vessels clearing for United States ports with cargoes of liquor. The American delegates departed with the feeling that the Canadian opinion is that America must make more strenuous efforts to enforce her own laws to stop smuggling before coining for help to a neighbouring country.