LOCAL OPTION IN CANADA.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXII, Issue 7720, 18 April 1887, Page 3

LOCAL OPTION IN CANADA.

A London newspaper says that Mr G^ant Allen's experiences of the working of local option jn Canada, as detailed in a communication to an ev^rijng paper, will be distasteful to many hearty friends of the people in this country, nnd may prove interesting to the people of Australia, It seems they have in Upper Canada a law known as the Scott Act, in accordance with which any county can entirety prohibit the sale of alcoholic stiimn.i::tS within its own limits liy means of a "local option" vote. This prohibitive measure prevails in the county of Frontenac, and Mr Grant Allen found that the net result of the Act was practically iiir operative, It increased rather than diminished drunkenness, and it had only one prohibitive effect, — that of preventing a moderate drinker from obtaining liquor whon his health or comfort needed it. Also to show the absurdity of this oppressive law, one town in the country was exempt from the incidence of the Act. Kingston thereby became an alcoholic safety-valve for the entire dis-_ trict, and people flocked there from all parts where the prohibitive measures were jn force in order to get drunk to their hearts' content. Illicit whisky shops also existed throughout tlje countp', and did a roaring trade. Mr Allen has seen the . town of Kingston given bodily over to a vast orgie, wherein multitudes of people from the surrounding villagos hold a saturnalia of unobstructed drunkenness. The truth is that prohibitive measures cannot, and do not, minimise drunkenness. The law is constantly broken, and spasmodic drunken fits are substituted for moderate or slightly immoderate drinking.