“DISCREDITED NOSTRUM"

Evening Star, Issue 22084, 18 July 1935, Page 1

“DISCREDITED NOSTRUM"

BREWERY CHAIRMAN ON PROHIBITION [Pkh United Press Association.] WELLINGTON, July 17. Reference to the national licensing poll to be taken this year was made by tho chairman, Mr D. Madden, at tha annual meeting of the shareholders in New Zealand Breweries Ltd. “ Towards the end of this year wa are to have a general parliamentary election,” said Mr Madden, “and, coincident with that election, the people of New Zealand will be required to vote on national licensing. Some four years ago, when a similar poll was imminent, the futility of taking polls at, threeyearly intervals, and at times when real problems confronted the electors, was recognised on all sides, and Parliament provided for the abandonment of that particular poll. To-day the arguments against these ever-recurring polls still hold, and they are strengthened by the fact that still further examples are before us that the infliction of prohibition of a regulated licensed trade, wherever adopted, has proved a colossal blunder, and the country or State concerned, without exception, has resorted to reasonable regulation as opposed to tyrannical prohibition. Our Dominion has been spared the experience of this discredited nostrum, and at the forthcoming poll I urge dccttvjs tvs exercise their franchise -on tmt tiucstiou, and in the result emphasise the decision they have so forcefully gn*en on former occasions—that_ New Zealand does not want prohibition. The report and accounts were retiring directors (Messrs Hugh Adam, A. Louisson, and H. T. Speight) were re-elected. ■