LIQUOR SUPPLIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 75, 30 March 1943, Page 4

LIQUOR SUPPLIES

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Mr. H. W. Milner, general superintendent of the New Zealand Alliance, replied to my letter appearing in your issue of Monday, March 22, but he has used the statistics he quotes in a way to give the impression that the quantities of brandy and rum he mentions i were available for civilian consumption. This is not so. A substantial portion of the brandy imported last year was imported by the Government for war and other Government purposes and six thousand gallons. was imported in December under seventh period 1943 licenses, for consumption in 1943. This parcel should have arrived in January. The great bulk of the rum imported last year was by the Government for war purposes and by tobacco manufacturers, for manufacturing. The civilian population got very little. Mr. Milner quotes figures covering beer, but omits to say what proportion was shipped overseas for the troops. The restriction of imports for civilian consumption to half the values imported in 1938 is imposing unnecessary hardship on a large number of elderly people, and is also leading to the sale of obnoxious alcoholic concoctions which would disappear if reasonable supplies of alcoholic beverages were allowed to be imported.—l am, etc., TRADER.