p. 299 | Drunkenness a Crime

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1879

Drunkenness a Crime.

THE Daily Oregonian of the 18th inst. contained a lengthy paragraph under the above caption, charging its authenticity to Dr. Henry A. Pratt of Boston. Yes, that's it. After the poor diseased inebriate has been gulled by the whiskey seller and given delirium tremens in exchange for his hard earned money, then turned over to the tender mercies of the gambling sharks that infest such places, it would be very Christian like and magnanimous to assault him with the strong arm of the law, carry him off to prison and relieve those who had worked the ruin of his now obnoxious person. For the hoodlum that gets drunk from choice, who takes pride in degrading himself and boasts of his own shame, we have no pity, but there are many, with whom drunkenness has become a disease, and whose lives are a continual struggle against temptation--these deserve the kindest treatment, and every possible assistance to free them from their bondage. He who deals in dangerous articles of merchandise such as powder, dynamite, glycerine or poison is held to a strict accountability by the laws of the land, and "he that furnishes the bottle to his neighbor and maketh him drunken also" ought to be compelled to care for him until he is able to care for himself. — Oregon State Journal.