DRINK PROBLEM.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 September 1921, Page 5

DRINK PROBLEM.

PROHIBITION ON TRIAL,

EXPERIMENT IN AMERICA. EVIDENCE OF FAILURE. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.— Copyright* London, Sept. 17. Lord Northcliffe, in a special message to the Daily Mail, says: Prohibition, as I have seen it in America and Canada is another word for a subterfuge of a humilitating and demoralising nature. Drink is the absorbing topic of conversation among Americans and is a universal theatrical jest. Friends ensure me that this perpetual talk on the subject drives people to drink who never drank before.

It was not pleasing to me to see American friendfl with long and distinguished public records locking the door and producing a flask. Nevertheless this practice is almost universal All the best French wines, Scotch whiskies, and English gins are readily purchasable, the dealers making enormous profits. One of my companions dined on the roof of a great New York hotel. Cocktails were served and champagne flowed as it has never done in London since the war began. Who had been bribed? The police of course; the magistracy does not know it, but illicit drinking, selling and bribing prevails very high up. There is abundance of sham drinks in small restaurants. I thought here is a prohibition company drinking umejuice, soda and lemon squash, orange crush and grapejuice. I did not know that each had a large quantity of alcohol. The price of a lemcn squash was 7s 6d.

New York is riddled with drinking dens and illicit stills, where horrible poisons are manufactured for residents in the cheaper localities. A distinguished professor said to me 'Tarts of America were always dry Places such as New York never will be.” I went to America with an open mind; I left convinced that prohibition, as I saw it, is not the right solution of the drink problem. HUGE FACTORY DISCOVERED. New York, Sept. 18. Federal liquor law officials have discovered a huge manufactory employing hundreds of people and operating illicit drug stores. This organisation is feeding half the United States with whisky, gin and rum, falsely labelled London and Cuba.