BEER AND TOBACCO.

Kumara Times, Issue 1019, 7 January 1880, Page 2

BEER AND TOBACCO.

The bad quality o£ beer and tobacco is (bays the New Zetland Times) seldom the cause of complaint and debate in the Upper House of a Legislative Assembly. During the property Assessment Bill discussion iu the Council several speakers urged a tax as.high as sixpence per gallon on coloiiial beer, and one hon. member stated as a reason for this course that colonial breweries had hitherto been most carefully protected and exempted from taxation—-favours which they requited by brewing most abominable beer. The emphatic " Hear, hears," whioh followed the remark betrayed a considerable amount of feeling on the subject. Later on Captaiu Fraser, speaking on the Tobacco Bill opposed it on the ground that to piss it would be injurious to health. Tobacco grown iu New Zealand would be of such detestable bad aroma that its being smoked in large quantities would vitiate the air of the Colony and the lun«s of its inhabitants. He had authority for speaking so. An hon. gentleman in that building was so lost to all sense of the fitness of things and the respect due to other people's noses as to smoke Swiss ci»ars—("Name, name")—and their smell was execrable. That convinced him that if villainous cigars were made in the Colony they would find smokers, and the result he had predicted would inevitably follow. In the interest of the public health he should therefore oppose the Bill most strenuously.—(Applause).