DRUGS AND DUTIES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST.

Evening Post, Volume XIX, Issue 63, 18 March 1880, Page 3

DRUGS AND DUTIES. TO THE EDITOR OF THE EVENING POST.

Sib — Perhaps yon will be able, through the medium of your columns, to enlighten the public how it happens that during last session there was an additional tax placed upon several articles^ Amongst others I notice 5 per cent, additional tax was imposed on drugs, patent medicines, &o. lam very sorry to say that instead of being charged the 5 per cent, we are put in for the respectable sum of 15 to 17£ per cent, extra. For instance, if you go to a drug store and want some of the most ordinary medicinal articles, we will say you ask for four small bottles of chlorodine, i.e., 6s before the tax, they will now charge you 7s, that means at once nearly 17^ per cent. Should you ask for a bottle of lung balsam — 5s 6d before the tax — 6s they will have the cool nerve to ask you for it. We will put it in tbis shape. Suppose a family should require medicine say at the rate of a pound per month, that is a very small item, in some cases unfortunately. The rate they charged, 3s and over on the pound, means 36a per year. Divide 36s by four would leave 93, that would be the proper amount due to them by the new tax. This additional amount our most respectable druggists ask us to pay in these depressed times. If the public don't at once resist this iniquitous apothecary's tax, I shall say there was some truth in the statement of our late Premier and the sixty-five thousand serfs. I am, &c, One of the Sixty-five.