NO LICENSE AND PROHIBITION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 51, 7 September 1928, Page 8

NO LICENSE AND PROHIBITION

(To the Editor.) Sir,—The secretary of the Licensing Kei'orm Association is on the run. He runs from two awkward facts. One is that the Quebec Liquor Commission in its official report stated in regard to drunkenness "an increase was inevitably bound to come some day." That is an admission that the Quebec Government, adopted the present system in the full expectation that it would produce increased drunkenness. ■That one fact alone is sufficient to condemn the system and those responsible for it. I have quoted sufficient authorities to demonstrate that the expectation was fulfilled. A system that "was inevitably bound" to increase,.drunkenness cannot be described by reasonable people as a "temperance trend." .As to wines, they contain three to four times as much alcohol as beer, and since they are generally drinik undiluted, they contain more alcohol than spirits and water, co that the talk o£ "lighter" beverages is mere bluff. ■ ; , The other thing that the secretary of the L.X.A. runs away from is the position in Ohinemuri. The secretary has laboured ably for the liquor interests in New Zealand for many years, and done his best to denounce No-license and-se-cure Restoration. Now, when License has been restored in Ohinemuri, and we are able to check up the results, he is mute, bojtg incontinently , from an invitation twice extended to examine the : position, The actual, effect can be shown in various ways, but I will content myself with the following assertions. The Magistrate's Court records show that in two years under License restored, a 9 compared with six years under No-license. the annual increase in offences is as follows: —Summary convictions, 151.6 per cent.; assaults and other offences', 129.5; 'druuk, including habitual drunkards, 275.0; prohibition orders, 390.1; selling liquor without a license, 775.0; all other offences, 113.6 per cent, increase. Distinct summary convictions show 130.7 . per cent., increase per annum. An additional constable has been sent to Ohinemuri following the restoration of the open bar. The official literature of the liquor interests declares "everyone knows that even to-day in 'dry' areas drunken orgies are common.' I invite the secretary of the L.R.A. to say whether thesassertions I have made are correct, and it incqrrect (o show how. I invite him to say whether or not Ohinemuri in its "dry' state with alleged "drunken orgies" had not an infinitely better record than it lias put up since License Was restored. With regard to the manifesto' issued by the late Revs. John Dawson and F. W. Isitt twenty-four years ago, it will be noted that it was) a protest "against an insidious attempt to handicap a great and genuine social reform by attaching to it an unprecedented invasion 'of private rights and liberties." Under Prohibition, no law-abiding citizen will need to fear, or have cause to fear, "an unprecedented invasion of private rights and liberties." Prohibition in New Zealand when it comes will involve suppression of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes.—l am, etc., J. MALTON MURRAY, Executive Secretary, New Zealand Alliance.