CHRISTCHURCH AND COCKTAILS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 22 January 1931, Page 3

CHRISTCHURCH AND COCKTAILS

\ YOUNG GIRLS HARMED DRINKING AT PRIVATE PARTIES “Too many young girls drink cocktails. They begin sometimes when they are well under twenty years, when they cannot possibly stand alcohol, especially cocktails, and the habit does them an incalculable amount of harm. R is bad for their health and, of course, other evils follow.” That (says the “Times”) is the answer of one Christchurch doctor to a query prompted by a cable from France announcing that the medical profession there were waging a war against the cocktail habit, and that there were young girls in French hospitals stricken with alcoholism. To the same inquiry another doctor said: “I have never come across a case where a woman in Christchurch has neded medical attention through overindulgence in alcohol. I don’t think there is a great deal of cocktail drinking in New Zealand, certainly not as much as is alleged. Prohibitionists use the cocktail for propaganda purposes, and by that means it gains most of its notoriety. , “It is well known, he continued, “that the cocktail is more harmful than the more popular drinks. The mixture of other drinks is bad for a start, and some of the ingredients used are fairly strong. I was in England and. lans some few years ago, and when in London I ran across a few cases of alcoholism in women, though they were victims of cocaine. In Paris . there was not as much cocktail drinking as m London. Things must have changed singe I was there. The great majority cf the Parisians drink wines.” Inquiries elicited the fact that, as far as Christchurch and other towns of New Zealand are concerned, most of the cocktail drinking is done at private parties. One city hotelkeeper ridiculed the idea that women drank cocktails systematically in the licensee houses. RIGHT THING TO ORDER “Women come in,” he said, “mostly with men, and they might have a drink, then go. I think myself that most cf the cocktails are drunk by women who think that they are the right thing to order, and have practically no experience of drinking. That type only has the one. Most of the hotels here have a few stock brands of cocktail, and those contain very little that will do great harm. There is no demand in this country for the expert cocktail mixer who uses all sorts of ingredients. People really do not know what they are drinking. It would be difficult to name two hotels in the Dominion where the cocktails contain, lor example, absinthe. Gin, the two vermouths, and some such liqueur as dherry brandy are generally used. Cocktails are strong, of course, but there is not the harm in them that there is in cocktails mixed by ‘experts who use all sorts of things to get their effects. Men, we find, sometimes like a cocktail as an appetiser before the evening meal, but very, very few drink them for their own sweet sake.’ . , , Still, it is admitted that there is a fairly large quantity of cocktail sold, and the conclusion is that the concoction is drunk mostly at private parties, the first doctor quoted has a wide experience of feminine ills, and, says that though the cases : are very rarely extreme, the harm is done when the vouneer girls take the cocktails, at an age when they should not take any ah cohol at all. Then baneful results were almost bound to follow any continued indulgence.