LIQUOR IN YUGOSLAVIA.

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

LIQUOR IN YUGOSLAVIA.

DRASTIC - GOVERNMENT BILL. RESTRICTION OF TRAFFIC, The Minister of Health in Yugoslavia recently drafted a bill to restrict the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks. The terms of the bill are such that, if it be passed in its present form and stiictly interpreted, nothing short of a revolution will have been brought about in this land flowing with rakia and wine. Rakia is brandy distilled from plums, and is the Serbian national* drink.

One clause of the bill provides that the unregulated production of alcoholic drinks shall cease, and that in future every producer must get permission from the competent authority; no worker under .18 years of age may be employed ; the produce must not be sold on, the premises where it is produced; and the producer must publish a bal-ance-sheet showing the gross profit made. Ten per cent, of this gross profit inimt be paid to the Society for Fighting'‘Against Alcohol, and if the concern produces liquors containing more than 30 per cent, of alcohol it must hand to this society an extra 10 per cent. I A second clause considerably restricts the sale of alcoholic drinks, which is virtually unrestricted at present except during-three days at election time. No alcoholic drinks are to be sold from 6 a'.m. on Saturdays until 8 a.m. on Mondays. When it is realised that Saturday and Sunday are the days on which the great part of the people of Belgrade and other Serbian towns go in the evenings to the cafes to hear music and sip sweet wines, the- revolutionary nature of this bill can be understood. No such drinks are to be sold on railway trains or passenger steamers, and station buffets are to be allowed to stock only drinks containing less than four per cent of alcohol".