BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1947 MAORIS AND LIQUOR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 4, 5 December 1947, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Tuesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1947 MAORIS AND LIQUOR

This week’s Magistrate’s Court list at Whakatane serves to illustrate the seriousness of the liquor problem amongst Maoris. Most of the cases on the police list could be traced to that source. Nor are these isolated cases. Whilst it is a fact that there are some amongst the native people who feel that a distinction between Maori and pakeha so far as the liquor laws are concerned is unfair, many of their leaders have made it plain that they regard liquor as one of the most serious factors menacing their march towards full equality of opportunity. They feel that many of their young men are led astray at early ages, drink their way into the Courts anw goals and thereby damn their future prospects. Both views have something to commend them, but the former has the weakness that it assumes the Maori is just as able to take care of himself in the matter of drinking as. his pakeha neighbour. That is so in some cases, but generally speaking it is not so, and such a statement implies no slur on the Maori. Rather it is a reproach to the pakeha, who after all taught the Maori to drink and now often condemns him for drinking to excess..

Still, it is sound logic to argue that there is not full equality of citizenship while there are distinctions between the races in the law. How'ever, the fact to be faced by the Maori—a fact proved by Court records —is that -many of his young people have not as yet developed a proper appreciation of the necessity for moderation in the use of liquor, and any distinction in the law is one for the protection of, rather than the persecution of the race. ' It is a matter of deep distress to those of the pakeha who know and respect the Maori people as a race with the potential ability to take their place in any calling or in any grade of society to see so many young men developing into immoderate drinkers with no ambition and little . self-re-spect. And the answer is not in the Courts.

It is right that the Police should do their duty in enforcing the law; but it is also right that there should be a concerted effort so to teach and encourage the youth of the Maori race that' the present distinctions in the law may ultimately become unnecessary. What we should remember in our criticisms is that, whereas the pakeha has behind him centuries of the use and abuse of strong drink, the Maori is a comparative stranger to John Barleycorn, with all his pitfalls and dubious pleasures. To know John Barleycorn well is to know him for the treacherous knave he is, and to treat him with the wariness his treachery deserves. To know him too well is perhaps to seek his company too often, and be introduced as his intimate friend to his pals the sordid temptations. He can be a charming acquaintance, splendid company up to a point, but beyond that point his society becomes undesirable.

What Maori youth has to learn, then, is to know him well enough to know just where he ceases to be respectable company for a self-respecting citizen, to regard him always as an acquaintance, never as a trusted friend, and never to allow him to assume the mastery, as he will do given half a chance. Until their knowledge of the charming traitor reaches that point then, in their own interests, they must be protected.