LIQUOR AND NO-LICENSE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 98, 26 April 1916, Page 3

LIQUOR AND NO-LICENSE.

DRY DISTRICTS’ DRINK. SOME FIGURES. (Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, April 20. A parliamentary paper ordered by the House of Representatives in July last has just made its belated appearance. It is a return showing the quantity and kind of alcoholic liquor sent into each no-license district in the dominion between January 1 and December 31, 1914, and the number of charges and convictions for drunkenness and other offences recorded in each district during the same period. That the return provides abundant material for controversialists on both sides of the licensing question goes without saying and that this material will be used by them in due course with their accustomed zeal may be taken for granted. But this is not the time for engaging in any diverting exercise of that kind and the average citizen, leaning to neither side, will be more interested in ascertaining what the figures compiled by the statisticians really mean than in turning them to the purpose of any particular set of disputants. Towards this end it is important to remember that the return does not show all it purports to show. It does not show, for example, the quantity of liquor sent into nolicense districts without the knowledge of the authorities, and in the city constituencies, such as Eden, Grey Lynn, Wellington South and Wellington suburbs this must amount to a very large quantity indeed. It would be impracticable, even if it were desirable, for the authorities to check the amount of liquor passing from a licensed district to an unlicensed district when the boundary between them is an imaginary line drawn down the middle of a street with dense population on both sides. It is obvious too, that when the bars are closed in a city district abutting on another city district where they remain open the facilities for obtaining drink in the ordinary way are not very materially lessened.

WHAT THE RETURN DOES SHOW. What no-license has done and what it has left undone cannot be determined by a survey of the official figures but an analysis of the quantities of liquor sent into the various nolicense districts will give some idee -f how the legal restrictions have affected th e communities immediately concerned. The following table shows the estimated population of each district on December 31, 1914, and the quantities of beer, spirits and wine per head of population sent into the'

district and presumably consumed during the preceding twelve months under the provisions of the law:

Average no-lic-ense district (1914) 169,970 1.6 0.24 0.02 Average New Zealand(l9o91913) 1,095,094 9.24 0.75 0.14 The consumption per head of population has been ascertained in each case by dividing the amount of liquor shown in the official return by the estimated population, men, women and children, as is done by the Government Statistician in similar cases, and the results may be accepted as representing very closely what may be called the authorised consumption within the district. No-li-cense, of course, is not intended to prohibit. It merely closes the bars and makes certain provisions against the illicit manufacture and consumption of liquor. SIGNIFICANT FACTS!

As already indicated, the amount of liquor admitted to the city no-license districts under the provisions of the law does not by any means represent the total home consumption of drink in these districts. If it did the prohibitionists would have good reason to rejoice over the success of their efforts. They might claim to have reduced the consumption of beer in Eden, Wellington South and Wellington Suburbs from the national average of rather more than 9 gallons to a local average of barely half a gallon and in Grey Lynn to less than a third of a gallon, and to have practically put a stop to th e consumption of spirits and wine in these districts altogether. But as a matter of fact the residents of these districs while ridding" hemselves of th e Jcensed houses have obtained their supplies from the houses kept open by their neighbours. The position of the rural no-license districts is different. In these the open bar and the bottle store are not within such easy reach and the official figures represent more closely the extent of their indulgence, though it must not be supposed that every keg of beer or every bottle of whiskey carried into Ashburton or Masterton, for instance, has passed under the eyes of the authorities. So far as the “authorised consumption” of beer is concerned, Invercargill, which is the largest isolated centre that has yet tried no-liceuse,' easily takes the palm. During the year it consumed 86,883 gallons of malt liquor which had duly passed the censor, an average of over 5 gallons per head or more than one half the average for the whole do-

million. Oamaru enjoys a similar distinction in regard to spirits, its “authorised consumption” of the more ardent liqudrs being only one-third less than the national average. Invercargill and Oamaru have held these records ever since they closed their public bars and as they have continued to vote against “restoration” it may be assumed that the “revulsion of feeling” which has been expressed at the polls in Masterton and Ashburton has not been experienced within their borders. SOME BROAD DEDUCTIONS.

It may be left to the extremists on both sides and to the average citizen who stands between them to discover what lessons they please in the figures, but there are one or two broad deductions that may be made here without encroaching upon the preserves of any of these good people. There can be little doubt that in the rural districts no-license has substantially lessened the amount of promiscuous drinking and to this extent contributed to the well-being of the whole community. Whether or not the evils it has produced are greater than those it has abolished is still a moot question .which the districts immediately affected must answer for themselves. As regards the city districts ■ the facts seem to suggest that it is more difficult to enforce the law in these areas than it is in-the rural areas and that when the law is enforced it is less effective. Invercargill is the most illuminative example in this connection. No-license in the Auckland and Wellington city districts means simply the transfer of the liquor business from one place to another place close by. Invercargill, on the other hand, stands alone in this respect, and up to the present it has not achieved the results its friends expected. Its population has grown and its trade has improved, but licensed towns of the same character have had similar experiences and the sum of its drinking has not been indisputably reduced.. It must do better in the future than it has done in the past if it is to guide the rest of the provincial towns into the no-license fold. That may be its mission in th e licensing campaign.

District Estimated Consumption population per head Beer Spirit .Wine gal. gal. gal. Ashburton 12,674 1.6 0.31 0.05 Bruce 11,667 1.7 0.431 0.02 Clutha 11,035 1.4| 0.48 0.01 Eden 20,068 0.5 0.04 0.03 Grey Lynn 17,843 0.3 0.02 0.01 Invercargill 16,674 5.2 0.28 0.03 Masterton 13,533 1.9 0.32 0.04 Mataura 11,546 2.9 0.49 0.02 Oamaru 13,421 1.8 0.52 0.02 Ohinemuri 11,703 1.8 0.25 0.03 Wellington Sub. 14,031 0.5 0.02 0.01 Wellington S. 15,775 0.5 0.05 0.01