THE SALE OP POISON.

Evening Post, Volume XLIII, Issue 141, 16 June 1892, Page 4

THE SALE OP POISON.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir— l think you will agree with me that of late years caseß of suicide and murders by the uses of poisons in the colony have been of a very great number, and, to my mind, the present mode of access by persons to obtain poisons under the sanction of law is a very bad one. For instance, if I wish to obtain a small quantity of poison to rid my dwelling of vermin, and I apply to the local chemist for it, I am debarred from getting it except I run hither and thither to pet someone to witness the purchase and the delivery of the article to me, while at the same time a man, as I am informed, or any person, may go to the wholesale merchant and get it by the hundred weight, without any license, permit, or any other authority whatcvor. And beyond this, I may stato that I have often heard men say that at a great many of tho sheep and cattle stations in the colony it is very common to see bags of arsenic standing open, and as easy of access by anyone as the bag of flour. What, may I ask, is there to prevent anyone who intends to commit suicide, or if the individual is base enough to take the lite of his fellow-men, from doing so easily ? I have recently been informed that it is proposed at tho next sitting of Parliament to amend the present law relating to the disposal or sale of poisons, and I think it is time it should be. A friend of mine told me a few days since that he was asked recently to go with a person to witness tho purchase and delivery of sixpennyworth of arsenic in Mastorton, and ho, knowing something of station business, said, " The idea of getting a witness for sixpennyworth from the chemist, when a man can go to the warehouse and, as I have said before, get a cwt without lot or hindrance ! " It appears to me strango that, thero being so many in our Legislative House who are supposed to know what good law is, and how it should be framed and administered, yet, on the appearnune of much manufactured by them when in the Statute Book, it often wants mending before bcinqj used ; and as the great Daniel O'Connell used to say of English law, so full of loopholes that a coach and horses might run through it. I am, Ac, Thomas W. Shute. Masterton. 13th Juno. 1892.