AMERICAN PROHIBITION TANGLE

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15043, 10 April 1919, Page 3

AMERICAN PROHIBITION TANGLE

The following information in regard to the American Prohibition tangle is taken from the New York "Journal of Commerce" of February 24th 1919: — Albany, Feb. 23.—Prohibition has again taken its place in the front rank of legislative issues, and promises to remain there until the passage of some kind of enforcement bill. The situation is not at all to the liking of most of the. members, as prohibition Is a topic which appears to them to be fraught with danger to their-personal political houes and ambitions. LIST OF MEASURES. Seven different prohibition or antiprohibition measures are ibefore tho legislature. They are: The ThompsonMcNab Bill, ajso known as the AntiSaloon League Bill, designed to provide for enforcement within the State of tho Federal amendment and delegating enforcement power to the State excise depar fcment, which would be called the Department of State Welfare; the Walker Search and Seizure Bill, intended to permit the confiscation of all liquors kept for private consumption ; the Dowling-Smith Bill, which would place proprietary compounds containing more i than one-half of one per cent, of alcohol . under the provisions of the public health law applicable to habit-forming drugs: i the McElligott Bill to rescind the rati- • fic'ition resolution, and three measures ' introduced by Assemblyman Welsh ,of Albany, two of which are aimed at the ropeal of the local optipn laws and ihe third defining "intoxicating liquors" ?s those which contain more than ten nor cont of alcohvl. ENFORCEMENT PROBLEMS DIFFICULT. Other phases of me enforceme". p-o- ---■ blem also will be the.s;2bi>rt,o;'prolongel

ronforenc.es nn3 «iMvnwori. It is admitted by the dry leaders that wny amendments, 'involving concessions by Tjoth Houses, will he attached to the Bill before it is ready for action on the floor. The battle over the Enforcement Bill will be fought out first in the Senate. Assembly leaders take the position that it is ainfair as "well as unnecessary to place the members of the Lower House on record on the enforcement proposition until-after the Senate has taken action. The members of the Senate do not oome up for re-election until 1920, the Assemblymen point out, and, therefore, it is better that the legislators who have an extra year of grace shall blaze the trail and thereby make the Assembly action a matter of concurrence or nonconourrence. rather than one of initiation. Members of the Lower House declare that it would mean political suicide for them to pass some prohibition measure 'which'later might be.rejected by the Senate New Zealand . Electors, do not forget that no popular vote was taken on Prohibition in America. The ratification of the War Prohibition measure was the act of legislatures, not of the people direct' ■ Also remember that .Fridays cables informed us that in the Chicago Mayoral Election on a popular vote Prohibition was repudiated\by a quarter, of a million majority.*