PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 October 1928, Page 5

PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

GOVERNOR SMITH’S POLICY.

(Australian Press Association.) (By Cable—Press Assn.—Copyright.,

(Recd. October 1, 9 a.m.) NEW YORK, September 29.

At Milwaukee, Governor Smith, in an address, gave a full exposition of his 'prohibition views. He said that political experience was keeping thousands of men in public, who . also thought as he did, from expressing their views. It was a great moral issue. “We have never had prohibition in this country, in the sense that hard liquor was banished from it. There is as much, if not more,

than'there was before prohibition. I claim the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Law is the producer of wholesale corruption among officials, charged with the enforcement. It is a well known fact that there is an abundance of liquor in Washington itself. Millions of people in the United States disagree with Mr Hoover that prohibition is a noble experiment.” He advocated a definition of what constitutes intoxicating beverage and expressed the belief that hard liquor would be driven from the country “if the people could be assured of an alcoholic beverage, declared by common sense and science to be non-intoxi-cating.” He asked for an amendment to the Eighteenth permitting States to decide prohibition for themselves, on the basis of a State wide referenda, and expressed himself as against the return of the saloon. He concluded: “If elected, it will be my duty to lay this matter before every community I can reach, and let them make their own decisions.” In the meantime, however, he would do everything humanly possible to. enforce the law as it stood.