NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE

Evening Star, Issue 22072, 4 July 1935, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND ALLIANCE

PRESIDENT'S ANNUAL REVIEW REPEAL IN UNITED STATES [Per United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, July 4. Speaking at the annual meeting of the New Zealand Alliance, the president (the Rev. J. R. Blanchard) said that delegates would discuss the forthcoming poll, which was due to be taken when the General Election occurred, probably early in December. It was seven years since the people had voted on the question whether the.i should continue to legalise a traffic which wasted their economic resources, produced crime, disease, and death, and cost the country annually seven or eight times more than was derived from it under the deluding title of. revenue. On the moral side they, had to record for that period 25,745 convictions for drunkenness; 6,344 prohibition orders, 1,989 convictions for being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle, 2,915 prosecutions of hotelkeepers for breaking the law, and 15,297 convictions for breaches of the Licensing Act. That during the years 1929 to 1934, a period of sever© depression and bitterest hardship, there should have been squandered on alcoholic liquor the . huge sum of £37.597,231, was a reproach to- their commonsense and their Christianity. They would be faced with the catchcry “ The United States tried Prohibition and rejected it.” This was not the time to give detailed evidence to prove the fact that repeal was “ put over ” by the votes of only 25 Ser cent, of those entitled to _ vote. Repeal was , advocated l as essential to obtain better results—less drinking, less drunkenness, less bootlegging, less crime—than there was under Prohibition. Repeal, it was vehemently asserted,’ would improve conditions and also reduce taxation and help the country out of its financial difficulties. Repeal conditions had been in force for over a year. The records of the police proved great increases in drunkenness averaging over 234 per cent, above that of the first year of Prohibition. The Federal Alcohol Administrator had admitted that there was now more bootlegging than ever before. The youth of the country' was indulging in drunken, orgies of a deplorable character never previously recorded. The revenue was not onethird of what was expected; taxation had increased enormously; and the public debt was-gigantic—the biggest in its history. Repeal on all counts had proved to be a ghastly failure..