Legalised Liquor

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 183, 1 May 1933, Page 11

Legalised Liquor

yi r> —May I correct some misapprehensions on the part of those who have commented ou the legalised liquor in the U.S.A. It is said that "I think you would drown in the stuff before you got drunk. Well, the alcoholic content is approximately 4 per cent, by volume, and some people appear to imagine that this is prnetieallv non-intoxicating. In New Zealand the brewers try to keep the alcoholic content of the beer to 4.9 per cent, by volume, so that there is very little difference between what has been legalised in Hie U.B.A. and what produces drunkenness here. , ... , As a matter of fact, Prolessor Walter Miles, of the Carnegie Institute, carried out a series of tests, and in a paper to the National Academy of Science said: •'There is no longer room for doubt in reference to the toxic action of alcoholic beverages as weak us 2.75 per cent. _ by weight,” and the legalised liquor is 0.6-j per cent. The sale will certainly not stop bootlegging, since in Canada the bootleggers have flourished exceedingly under systems of so-called State control, so much so that the Government had In descend to competition with them. Before prohibition 90 per cent, of the liquor consumption in the U.S.A, was beer, it was beer and its sale that produced the pre-prohibition evils. And it is for this reason that I anticipate the legality of the action of Congress will be tested in the Supreme Court, since the Eighteenth Amendment .prohibits the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes, ’ and the beer now legalised is certainly intoxicating. Interesting developments may be looked for in due course.—l am. etc.. J. HALTON MURRAY. General Secretary, New Zealand Alliance. April 26.