SLY-GROG SELLING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10464, 31 October 1911, Page 6

SLY-GROG SELLING.

[To The Editor.}

Sir, — 1 admire your plain speaking in drawing attention to the way the law is being defied by the slygrog seller. \our footnote to "AntiDropper's" letter is brief and to the point, 1 hare absolutely no time for "droppers." The law allows one person to bring into Masterton five bottles of 'beer, or nearly two bottles of whisky every day (except Sundays) without having to notify the Police Court. Surely this is a very liberal limit, and there should be no necessity to hreak the law. Yet we know, the police know, that sly-grog selling is rife in Masterton, but to obtain sufficient evidence to get a conviction is entirely another matter. The Rev. Hammond, in his address at Palmerston North last Friday evening, said: "The relationship, of the sly grog shop to the open bar in a tow>n was the same as that of a snail to an old cow in a vegetable garden. The sly grog shop would have ho more chance of getting the young men than a yellow dog. with wax legs had of catching an asbestos cat in Hell."' I don't want to make the pace quite so hot as that, but as a couneracting argument let me remind him, "That youths under 21 in licensed areas are prohibited by Act of Parliament. In prohibited areas, the' seller will supply anybody, irrespective/of age or sex." This, to my mind, is one of the mos ; objectionable features of No-license. Of course No-license, that is "jsolatietd" no-license, could never be an ' unqualified success. Nobody expected it would be. It is-only n means to an end, viz., the option of a straight out vote for, or against National Prohibition. The ultimate end of this irritating and perplexing problem will he "State crntrol of Jh& liquor traffic," for if National prohibition is canned it will compel lie State to take precautionary n.ensures to prevent sly-grog smuggling and the importation of scent in the form of scented whisky. This will ho one form of State control. I «vn, etc.,

STATE CONTiIHi,