THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23830, 9 June 1939, Page 15

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC

TO THE EDITOR Si r) _The recent report of the annual meeting of the Dunedin Licensing Committee makes interesting reading, in that it was stated the hotels generally were satisfactorily conducted. What on earth is to be the state of affairs when they will be reported as being unsatisfactory, when it is common knowledge that with hardly an exception drink is sold after hours on any night of the week, and not only for consumption on the premises? Do those who prosecute some poor widow for the sale of a pound of butter on a Sunday exercise the same vigilance over the selling of liquor to mere youths on Sundays and at all hours? I think not. In the case of one hotel in the suburbs, customers ring from a nearby telephone at any time after hours and all day Sunday. A watch is kept at the hotel, and the door is conveniently opened as soon as the customer readies the door. And tins is only one of the well-conducted hotels we hear so much about. The Dunedin Presbytery did not go far enough in its recent recommendations when it left out a clause, relating to Sunday trading, which is a menace and no mere fancy. Might I be permitted to refer to another cause of misery, especially to many young girls in our city, and that is the constant parking of cars along our main streets with the object of attractin'? these foolish young folk to go joy-riding? I have heard of several sad cases where young girls have been enticed into cars which have been parked right up to the kerbstone for the purpose of attracting these foolish ones to their own undoing. If. a person is found loitering for evil intent there is a law against them. Does it not apply in these cases, too? It is strange that Sunday is the night when this evil is most apparent in our city. Trusting those in authority will use their powers to some good.—l am, etc., Moral Rearmament. Dunedin, June 7.