PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 9 November 1925, Page 5

PROHIBITION IN U.S.A.

PROGRESS OF ENFORCEMENT. BENEFITS OF THE LAW. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRHIGT. NEW YORK, Nov. 7. Representative Hudson, chairman of the Congressional Committee which investigated the enforcement of the Volstead law through a thousand questionaires sent out to Federal and State officials of social welfare organisations and leaders of industrial and commercial life, outlined the findings of the committee before a meeting of the Anti-Saloon League at Chicago. He said the legal distribution of whisky had diminished, there now being 23 States where physicians cannot legally prescribe liquor. There is. however. ' a leakage of approximately six million gallons of dematured alcohol into bootleg channels. The production of alcohol has grown tremendously since the advent of prohibition, the increase being from 100,000,000 gallons in 1920 to 136,000,000 gallons in 1924. The great weakness of the enforcement of the eighteenth amendment had been the lack of adequate penalties, the fines imposed operating virtually like the license law.

The questionaires almost unanimously regarded the benefits of prohibition as including: (1) A decrease of paupery; (2) an increase of home ownership; (3) an increase of life insurance. There iva s a divergent opinion regarding the death rate from alcohol, but the questionaires believe that a million lives have been saved, in which prohibition was a large contributing factor. The Canadian license vending system was declared to be unsatisfactory. Mr Hudson, in concluding, said: “The popular will which compelled the remarkably rapid ratification of the eighteenth amendment is probably less clear spoken to-day, but it is stronger than ever that prohibition is the ultimate method of dealino- with the liquor traffic.”