SINISTER TRAFFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 85, 10 April 1943, Page 4

SINISTER TRAFFIC

COSTLY DRINKING

SALES WITHIN THE LAW

Sly-groggery in its worst phases, especially in areas where servicemen are quartered, is keeping the police particularly busy. Convictions, when secured, are usually followed by heavy fines. But such punishments seem to be failures as deterrents, considering the magnitude of the traffic, for fines, heavy as they may be, can generally be j met out of the princely profits of the trade, Even terms of imprisonment, so far, have not checked its growth, fertilised as it is by a steady flow of good American dollars. However, the police, provided it is backed up by a sympathetic public, can be left lo cope with this sly-grog business. What is hard to deal with is trade conducted more or less within the law. The ordinary bar or bottle department customer is now finding it almost if not quite impossible to buy a bottle of wine or spirits in the ordinary retail way. Even if such goods are obtainable their prices are extortionate, commanding, for spirits, £2, £3, or £4 per bottle, and that often as "a favour," prices quite beyond the means of the majority of those elderly people who may really need a stimulant in j moderate, not to say, medicinal quanti- I ties. These and other people, however, | are debarred from taking wine as an alternative for the same reason: extortionate retail prices. For instance, Australian hock served at a hotel meai was charged and paid for at £2 a bottle. Current prices 'to servicemen are, whisky 30 dollars a bottle (£9 2s j 6d New Zealand currency), wine 15 dollars (£4 17s 4d).

Is it surprising, as some members of the Trade fear, that public resentment at these charges is growing and may yet make itself painfully felt?

By wine as a substitute for spirits is meant the fermented juice of the grape, produced, packed, labelled, and distributed by vignerons, or makers, with a reputation to guard, a good name to preserve, a brand to protect. STRANGE DECOCTIONS. It is not only the sly-grog business, then, that has succumbed to the irresistible profits attaching to sale of anything with a spirituous bite in it. Strange decoctions are being sold. They are put up and labelled attractively as "cocktails" and other potable liquors, as are also "wines," masquerading as sherries or ports and which are not the products of Spain or Portugal or any other wine-making country. Such "ports" or "sherries" have their origins in apples, beetroot, swede turnips, carrots, even potatoes, so it is reported; but all are fortified and some heavily. These beverages are sold on their "headiness," and "The Post" is credibly informed that they are sold through regular as well as irregular channels of trade, that the stuff is bought in bulk and bottled and sold where price is no consideration and honest dollars easy to come by, sold principally to servicemen, some of them quite young in years but made old by the bitterness of war service.

. Incidentally, bottles with quite clean labels of well-known brands of spirits or wines command a premium of Is or more over other empties required for purposes of refilling. Some hotelkeepers, it would appear, are forced by the competition of .others in the business to "get the stuff," no matter how or what its first cost, recouping themselves by charging the current exorbitant prices. Supplies for the sly-grog trade may be, and it is reported, are being, drawn from quite legitimate sources. These and the regular trade demands are eating into the already depleted stocks of liquors of quality. Some wholesale firms, however, are known to be exercising a form of rationing to their regular customers with the object of giving all of them fair and equal treatment, and they will not supply goods to anyone else. But that some members of the Licensed Trade are only too eager to get supplies elsewhere than through regular mercantile houses was illustrated by a recent Court case in which a city hotelkeeper bought—and paid for —whisky from a man who said he had bought it from another man Who had got it through being "in the know," whereas the stuff had no existence at all outside the imagination of the duped buyer.

RESTRICTIONS ON GOOD LIQUOR.

Weak tea, vinegar, and water have been sold as whisky and just plain water sold as gin in duly labelled clear glass bottles. This kind of stuff is palmed off on to confiding servicemen and paid for at anything from the equivalent of £2 to £5 a bottle, before the nature of the contents is discovered. But dubious dope, heavily alcoholised, is also being marketed and bought at fancy prices by servicemen, It is strong, fightable stuff, provocative of trouble, and has caused trouble. This traffic, "The Post" was assured, is growing and assuming all the worst features of illicit trading in liquor, with its fascination of big money, spice of danger, and thrill of defying the law.

Opinions of some who are well placed in the wholesale trade are in accord, that so long as supplies of quality liquor are restricted to the extent they are, sq long is this illicit trading likely to expand. Scarcity of quality liquor had created the demand and opened the way for trade in doctored liquors illegally distributed to servicemen at 20, 30, or even 50 dollars a bottle.

Again, the good times being enjoyed by many workers had made them flush of money and many of them wholly indifferent to what they paid for liquor. This, too", had helped to reduce supplies of quality liquors to be sold in the regular way of trade. On the other hand, as was pointed out, Australia has millions of gallons of wholesome, honest wines, which cannot be exported because of shortage of shipping and the closing of the important market in the United Kingdom, Admission of these wines, it was believed by some in the liquor business, might mitigate if it did not wholly remove the attendant and growing evils of the irregular sale of liquor now believed to be increasing throughout the Dominion to its grave moral injury.