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New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 75 (Supplement)

A serious defect in the new English Licensing Act has been revealed by the explanation of the Home Office, by which it appears that the blaek-B»tedi persons, while debarred from licensed premises, may obtain from the chemist anything lie chooses to sell them. There seems to be a serious danger here, if the anomaly is not remedied, that in many cases the only effect of the Act will be to turn the drink habit' to the morphia habit, while chemists may be tempted to supply intoxicating compounds under the name of “ drugs.” Tho amission is parallel to that which forbids a man to buy two-pennyworth of laudanum for toothache from a chemist without all sorts of irritating formalities, and allows him to buy from the photographer’s next door as much poison as would kill a regiment. The number of patients admitted to the Palmerston North hospital during the year ended last month was 254. Of these 237 were discharged, and 22 died, leaving 23 in the institution on March 31st. The average stay of patients in the hospital was 26.31 days.