SPIRITS, WINE, BEER, AND TEA.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4447, 31 July 1922, Page 2

SPIRITS, WINE, BEER, AND TEA.

« RATES OF CONSUMPTION IN NEW ZEALAND,

A paper tabled in the House of Representatives shows that the consumption of spirits in 1921 was 2.55 gallons per head of the adult male population. This was -08 of a gallon less than the consumption in the pre- 1 virus year (2.63 gallons). The highest consumption on record in the period 1901-21 was that of 1915 (2.75 gallons) The consumption of wine and ale and beer is computed upon the male and female population over 15 years. The 1921 figure for wine was 0.26 of a gal'on. More wine, apparently, was drunk in New Zealand in 1921 than in any other year of the last two decades except 1920, when t'be consumption was 0.29 of; a gallon per head. The drinking of ale and beer has been considerably less in the last five years tha,n in the fifteen years immediately preceding them. The share of etifhi member of the male and female population over fifteen in the ale and beer drunk during 1921 was .04 of a gallon. The figure for 1920 was .07. Tlie consumption of the past two years looks small in comparison with that of 1907, which was 0.42 of a gallon. ■concerned .

Tea, the consumption of which is computed on the whole population pf the Dominion, was drunk at the rate of 6.31 b per head in 1921 and of 8.241 b in 1920. The year 1920 saw more teadrinking than any other in the past twenty years except 1914, when the consumption was 8.721 b per head. New Zealanders consumed more sugar in 1921 than in the preceding three years .The amount per head of the total population was 107.31 b. The big sugar-consuming year of the past twenty was 1915, when 124.81 b per head was reached.