“JUDGE BY FACTS”

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 66285, 2 October 1925, Page 5

“JUDGE BY FACTS”

o AN OUNCE OF TRUTH IS WORTH A TON OF PROPAGANDA

Prohibition is inevitably followed by a terrible increase in drug traffic. That is the candid verdict of every authority who is closely acquainted with conditions as they are. Mr Frederick A. Wallis, Commissioner of Correction, New York, states officially that since Prohibition the United States leads the world in the consumption of opium. An average of 36 grains per capita is used in U.S. each year. India uses but 27 grains, while Italy—a wine-drinking country—uses only one grain. Germany uses two grains, England three, and France four.

The following is an extract from the New York Times, September 12, 1924: “Judge H. S. McDevitt told the Grand Jury in an address in Quarter Sessions Court today that there were 30,000 drug addicts in Philadelphia, and that they were supplied by nai’cotics by at least 1,000 dealers and agents. The traffic had assumed unprecedented propoi'tions and now menaced the health and safety of the whole city.” Such evidence cannot be refuted by the vague sentimentalisms of the professional prohibitionists. There is such a weight of irrefutable facts in favour of Continuance of New Zealand’s present clean, happy and tempei*ate prosperity, that there is only one course open to the thinking Maorilander.*