PROHIBITION AS I SAW IT

Hokitika Guardian, 2 November 1922, Page 4

PROHIBITION AS I SAW IT

BY AN.AUSTRALIAN. (From “Sydney Bulletin.”) (Continued). In Maryland a prescription costs 2 dollars, and a pint of wliisky in Washington costs 2 dollars 50 cents., hut outside of the price there is no difficulty. Wet, if expensively wet, is the United States. Kentucky has been allegedly a dry State for many years; yet the other day a moonshiner was arrested with a still in lull blast, and he said he had been making whisky for 40 years and never knew that there was a law against it. Stills are sold openly in 50 shops in New York, almost everybody homc- v brcws ; men compare recipes for gin-manufacture with the holy joy of pendants discovering literary curiosities;' the Prohibition U.S. Government runs Govern- 1 men Atlantic liners that sell liquor, and states that if it abolishes liquor sales on American .ships it must get out of tlm passenger business. Queliec is using the American thirst to relieve itself of debt—the Government now owning the liquor monopolv; and on this day of writing 24 motor armv-trucks mounted with much-

I UIULUI til lll ,' " *-• 1 , 1 inc-giins, leavi 1 AT"' ' ork tor the. Canadian border. These "ill operate with a fleet of motor-boats in the attempt to prevent whisky-smuggling along the St I.awreme. To prevent smuggling along this great ri\tx with its thousand miles of water line and its manv thousand of islands, is a job for IOO'.OOD police. Public opinion here that is not. hopelessly one-eyed concludes that Prohibition "ill he effective when every second man is a Prohibition officer, bitty machineguns and ary-trucks of a speed up to 70 miles an hour, can have no noticeaide affect on thn flood of alcohol that is so profitable to Canada ; as it is also to British Columbia, Cuba. Mexico, Britain and the countries ol the Mediterranean. The trade in British Columbia is a. I Government monopoly, as in Quebec; 1 and the Attorney-General of British Columbia has announced a reduction ' of 25 cents a bottle in the price of ' i whisky and of 75 cents a. bottle in the ' I price of gin. An excellent wine is j made of the dandelion, and the f .S.A. 1 Goverment has now declared the danI delion prohibited tor manufacture. But almost every household in Ac"' Jersey has its children collecting the ■ little' flowers, and almost every housewife makes wine of the weed. It is a j thin, delicate wine with -a distinctive and very delicate bouquet. The Prohibition Department is also inquiring ■ into the crimes of the mission-fig of ' Califorin. which mnkse a liquor with a i sizable kick in it, the market price of mission-figs having doubled since tbc discovery of the kick, i The I'.S.A. Government pas-sengt rsliips cniitiimo to sell liquor at sea ; while the humorless Department that pretends to enforce Prohibition now bag s the Governments of Britain. Canada, Cuba and Mexico to help it enforce the law against importations ol j liquor, which law it is incapable | forcing with its own machinery. The reply of Britain is reported as “sympathetically non-committal,” it is certainly polite, hut the. politeness cannot help, shoving the amusement of the answerer. The Prohibition Department also asks Unit the three-mile limit should ho made a 12-mile limit, so that smuggling shall he more dillicult. hut there could ho no end to the shifting of a limit, and with a limit of 12 7) mih's smuggling would continue, i because the long coastline could employ thousands of guards and still fail. Prohibition is a joke where it isn’t a business." (To he continued).