THE PROHIBITION CAUSE

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 176, 13 April 1923, Page 3

THE PROHIBITION CAUSE

ADVOCATES SPEAK IN TOWN HALL “UNDISMAYED BY REVERSE”

Three prohibition advocates, Dr. A. B. O’Brien, of Christchurch, Mr. L. M. Isitt, M.P., and Commissioner R, Hoggard, of the Salvation Army, addressed a fairly large public meeting in the Town Hall last night. Mr. W. D. Hunt was chairman.

Dr. O’Brien said the chief object of his address would be to enforce the lesson that alcohol was a narcotic drug, and harmful in its action on man. The oidy effect of alcohol was to put people to sleep in various ways. It was not a stimulant. He wished that medical men who supported the Moderate League would come on to the public platform and tell what good alcohol did. It was never essential to .life, and it was always harmful. When one man invited another to have a drink, Ins intention was, presumably, to do the other man a good turn. But alcohol was useless as a beverage. Jt abstracted waver from the body, and provoked, instead of quenching, thirst. So far, then, as the quenching of thirst was concerned, the man to whom the drink was presented received no benefit. Did he gain anything in the way of food? The best, the ideal form of food, was human milk. In that there was nothing corresponding to alcohol. Albumen, sugar, and fat were the essentials of rood. These things the body stored up Alcohol could produce a certain amount of heat in the body, bu.t it could not rebuild any worn-out tissue, because it did not contain any of the elements of the body. The first thing the body did when alcohol was introduced into it was to endeavour to rid itself of the drug. Thus alcohol was neither a food nor a drink. The only thirst-quenching part of an alcoho’ drink was the water it contained. Alcohol was not a stimulant. A man who took alcohol in solitude and quiet did, not feel any disposition to dance or sing. The reason that a man became jovial and noisy when drinking in company was that the alcohol put his higher centres to sleep and let nis lower centres run away with him. It obscured his judgment and left him to the influences of his lower impulses. The humsn heart beat about 100,000 times in the 24 hours, and each beat did enough work to lift 36 ounces of blood one foot. If a man took two ounces of alcohol it caused his heart to make 8000 extra beats in 24 hours, and put his organ to the exertion of “lifting another 15 tons one foot.” There remained the question whether alcohol was of any use as a medicine. No man died for want of alcohol, while many died because of it. It had a temporary good action in some ailments like pnuemonia. When a man was ill with pneumonia he was so busy lighting lor his life that he had not time to digest. Alcohol, without being digested, gave him a little energy. It quieted hm a little, and dilated his blood-vessels on the surface so as to cool him slightly. The speaker had yet to find the prohibitionist Who wished to prohibit medicinal alcohol. But no one had the slightest right to give a patient alcohol without knowing what was wrong. If, for instance, there was sonic internal haemorrhage, the effect of alcohol would probably be to cause further haemorrhage. No one but a person capable of diagnosing ailments had a right to prescribe alcohol. The action of alcohol was upon the brain and the nerves. Under the influence of liquor, men did things Which in their sober moments they had deep cause to regret. The drug produced an illusion of well-being. It deluded as a food. It deluded as a stimulant. It made a man feel warmer when he was really giving out heat. The whole secret of alcohol was that it had deluded man into believing it his friend, when all ttie time it was his enemy. Dr. O’Brien quoted experiments demonstrating the effect of alcoholic heredity upon the young of guineapigs. He asserted emphatically that alcohol had disastrous effects upon the progeny of its human victims. Commissioner Hoggard said that the Salvation Army required its members to abstain from liquor. He believed that great things could be achieved if all religious organisations adopted a similar rule. He described the degradation that alcohol had caused in various countries he had seen. ’ The Salvation Army, he said, could be depended upon to do everything possible to sweep away the liquor traffic, which was a curse to humanity. Mr. Isitt said that the prohibitionists were still confident and determined, in spite of the fact that they had been temporarily defeated. The defenders of the liquor traffic did not offer a single defence that reached the dignity of a reason. Was it for such arguments as the liquor advocates advanced that the prohibitionists would give up? (A voice: Never 1) The prohibitionists would never admit themselves vanquished He had been commissioned to speak of “The Revenue Bogey.” He felt it unnecessary to devote much time to a subject already so completely disposed of. The fallacious idea had been fostered that the abolition of the liquor traffic would mean an unwelcome change in the in-ci-i'.nd* of taxation. The fact was that if prohibit’on had been carried and a six ' months’ * interval allowed to elapse before the closingdown of the trade, th* Government, far from being poverty-stricken by loss of liquor revenue, would have collected more in half a year than ever it had previously collected in a twelvemonth; for alcoholic liquor would have poured into the country, every drop of alcohol in bond would have been cleared, and every man in the habit of taking I’quor would have bought his store. What prospect was there of any serious reform from the people who said so much about cleaning-up the liquor traffic in New Zealand, and preserving it under a system of careful regulation ? 177134 could come, of the report prowled by the licensing Committee of Parliament? One had only to look at the personnel of the committee to juffre The committee had actually suggested that the licenses held in districts where there were too few consumers to make the business pay should be transferred to the centres of population where the hotels would flourish. Prohibitionists who felt, inclined to s'aeken in their enthusiasm should go slumming and see for themselves the frightful effects of the liquor traffic.

"1 urge you,” concluded Mr. Isitt, “far from being d smayed bv the fact that we have not yet succeeded, to remember that we are striving to wrest from the forces of evil the most effective weapon they have in all their armoury. We should be content to work and wait. It is worth our while to persist and persist until we have gained, by God’s help, this triumph; because when we have gained this triumph we shall have paved the way for a. new Pentecost.”