THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

Observer, Volume XXIII, Issue 2, 27 September 1902, Page 3

THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

Another Insidious Danger

THE introduction of liquor tablets, or spirits in a solid form, may have an influence upon the King Country trade for which no provision has been made. In the first place, it will be practically impossible to check the inflow of the commodity, because it will not be carried in trucks or even in the guard's van, but in the waistcoat pockets or, for greater safety, in the hats or boots of the importers, or in other ways that would require a search so minute that a couple of regiments of soldiers would be necessary to carry it out, and then they wouldn't.

Besides, what is to prevent the manufacturer of the tablets getting them up in suitable shape and labelling them cough lozenges. It is wellknown, in Prohibition countries at any rate, that most patent medicines contain a large proportion of alcohol, and the doctors who recommend whisky as a specific are much too numerous to particularise. An immediate effect of the introduction of the new cure would be an epidemic of coughs and colds that would speedily spread to every settlement in the King Country and all along the Main Trunk line.

Nor would the invention remain confined to the King Country, to which it would naturally fly at the outset. There would arise a demand far it by those householders who have heretofore been in the habit of dropping into the last pub. on the way home to fill up the lemonade bottle, while for long journeys, and picnics, and the like, it would be a boon and a blessing. It will probably be taken to opera and concert, and even to Church. There are other lurking possibilities which had better be left to the imagination. Clearly, it is the duty of those who guard the morals of the community to ace that the evil looming up is met and grappled with. The question of tied houses dwindles to very small proportions beside the prospect of being able to bny liquor at the chemist's and the lolly shop.