Deaths Under Prohibition’

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 69, 14 December 1933, Page 11

Deaths Under Prohibition’

Sir, —The unwary reader of cable news from the U.S.A, will most likely conclude that 256 persons who are said to have been killed during the effort to enforce prohibition, and 45,549 who have died of alcoholism during the prohibition regime, would be alive to-day but for that effort to abolish the liquor traffic. May I put the matter in the correct light? The police in the U.S.A. kill many people in efforts to enforce various laws. In May. 1928. it was stated at a public meeting “that cases of shooting—accidental or worse—in which the New York' police force takes part, probably in one year outnumber all the prohibition cases in America.” But nobody makes that a basis for 'the repeal of these laws that the police seek to enforce per medium of sudden death. Statistics issued by the U.S. Census Bureau showed that in 1917, before prohibition. deaths from alcoholism were 5.2 per hundred thousand of population. Taking one hundred and ten millions as the means that every year during prohibition period, these deaths, on the basis of the figures given above, work out at 3 per hundred thousand. (Actually Census Bureau figures show the average over twelve prohibition years to be 2.9.) This means that every year duirng prohibition 1741 fewer people died of alcoholism than would have died if the 1917 conditions hatl continued. In other words, prohibition effected a saving of 21,482 lives. Now that a great measure of social reform has been frustrated, we may expect the cable news senders to lose interest in the evils arising from the use of liquor. This probably explains why no cable was sent round the world telling us that in September last, under the nonintoxicating beer conditions. Washington, D.C., eclipsed all—even pre-prohibition records —for arrests for week-end drunkenness, or that respect for law is being made evident in Chicago by the open trading of 1759 saloons which pay no license fees to the citv.—l am. etc.. J. MALTON MURRAY, GeneraL Secretary, 1 N.Z. Alliance. Wellington, December 7.