EPIDEMIC PROFITEERING.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 17 July 1919, Page 4

EPIDEMIC PROFITEERING.

The Epidemic Commission's report appears to have given general satisfaction, and probably only one person disapproves of it. That person, perhaps it is unnecessary to add, is the Hon. G. W. Russell, who seems to think that the Commission has been more intent upon belittling the Health Department than in making useful suggestions or recommendations, Mr Russell may say what he pleases, but the fact remains that the Commission has made some really valuable recommendations, one of the most valuable being that the prices of goods, etc., required in fighting an epidemic, should be regulated by law. Profiteering is always objectionable, but when it is pursued during a time of general sickness and at the expense of unfortunate people too ill to raise their voices in protest, it becomes shameful and abominable. During the last epidemic in this country the druggists must have made enormous profits, such drugs as ammoniated quinine, eucalyptus oil, camphorated oil, and similar remedies in universal request being retailed at unprecedently high rates. Of course the war was on, and overseas shipping uncertain, But even allowing for all that the public were most certainly exploited, and such a state of things should not be allowed to occur again. Another excellent suggestion in the report is that N.Z should unite with rther lands in the establishment of an inter-national bureau for the collection and distribution of information about disease. Had such a bureau existed last October or November the Health Department might have been in possession of cabled information which would have led it to adopt the precautionary measures that it appears to have neglected.