LOSSES BY EARTHQUAKE AND FROM DRINK.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21264, 19 February 1931, Page 5

LOSSES BY EARTHQUAKE AND FROM DRINK.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,— Calamitous and deplorable as the results of the recent earthquake are, there is a greater menace and a more destructive agency continually at work in the Dominion. Directly and indirectly through drink, from four to five times more deaths are occasioned annually than have resulted through the recent catastrophe. Earthquakes are the result of Nature s workings in our globe and so cannot be avoided. Drink casualties are the result of the determinate action of human beings in voting for continuance of the liquor ti'iiiiic The official value of land and buildings in Napier and Hastings is given as £7,745,000. Although the loss of buildings has been'enormous, the land remains. The annual financial loss to this country through drink must be well over £16,000,000, the average drink bill alone averaging over eight millions. The many evils and diseases, sufferings of innocent women and children, resulting through drink go on year in and year out and overwhelm in total the regrettable casualties and sufferings resulting from the Hawke’s Bay upheaval, which occurs once in a restricted area, whereas the ravages and miseries due to drink go on with machine-like reiteration over the whole land.

It is a peculiar commentary upon our boasted civilisation that, while the whole country has been rightly aroused in sympathy over the great earthquake, practically no notice is taken of the far greater evil of the liquor traffic, that stalketh always as a devouring beast, and this by the express will of the populace. —I am, etc., New Zealander.