100 years on from Prohibition

Yesterday marked 100 years since Prohibition was enacted nationwide in the United States. While New Zealand never quite followed suit, we came very close.

The pioneering days of saloons and lawlessness in the mid to late

1800s saw a resistance to alcohol from various groups and, from the

1880s, the campaign for the prohibition of alcohol had developed into a powerful mass movement. In 1886, religious bodies, political interests and temperance groups loosely joined together as the New Zealand Alliance for the Suppression and Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic.

The Alliance, as it was known, became a significant political force in the 1890s, with members holding seats in Parliament and having huge sway with voters. With a strong voice and political support during this time, the Alliance successfully brought the issue of prohibition on to the Government agenda.

Legislation introduced in the

1890s allowed for local electorate votes for prohibition (no-licences) and continuance (the status quo) to be held regularly. However, a required three-fifths majority meant prohibition was unlikely. Between 1894 and 1908, only 12 out of 76 electorates went ‘‘dry’’. These regional polls were abolished in

1918, except for in the now-dry regions, where polls continued until each voted to become ‘‘wet’’ again.

A special liquor referendum was held in 1919 and, after years of lobbying from the temperance movement, it required only a majority to pass. The outcome initially gave prohibition a majority of 13,000 votes. But only days later the votes of troops with the overseas Expeditionary Force were counted, and the result was flipped, with 31,000 votes swinging it in favour of continuance.

With the onset of economic depression and the failure of prohibition in the United States, support for prohibition declined in the 1930s. New Zealanders were offered the option to choose at each election for continuance, prohibition or state control of liquor until the national licensing poll was finally abolished in 1989.

Many of the no-licence electorates had reopened their bars by the

1940s, although the last three – Eden, Roskill and Tawa – remained dry until 1999.

During the push for prohibition, many elements of the sale and supply of alcohol changed in New Zealand, some of which have a direct link to how we regulate and behave with alcohol today.

In 1915 and 1916, petitions calling for pubs to close at 6pm were signed by almost 160,000 New Zealanders. In 1917, the government agreed to restrict hotel opening hours to 6pm as a temporary wartime measure. In reality, this lasted for 50 years, with the now-infamous ‘‘Six o’clock Swill’’ finally ending in 1967, when

10pm closing became the norm. Fifty years of this behaviour had a huge impact on our drinking culture, from which we are only just recovering today.

So where are we, 100 years on from the closest we came to becoming a ‘‘dry’’ country?

There is still a strong movement in society for prohibition and alcohol restriction: we see it regularly through somewhat alarmist stories about how we are drinking. However, most metrics around alcohol consumption have improved over the past 40 years.

We drink less per capita, with alcohol consumption slightly below the OECD average, and we’ve seen a decline of seven percentage points in drinking by young people (aged 15-24), from 83.8 per cent in 2006-07 to 76.8 per cent in 2018-19, according to Ministry of Health figures. These changes aren’t based on tighter regulation; in fact, we have later closing times than we did 40 years ago, and advertising and supermarket sales were deregulated in the 90s.

The shift has been a generational one. People’s understanding of why moderate consumption is better: the focus on quality over quantity, introduction of low and alcohol-free beverages, and younger people knowing when to draw the line. Some areas need improvement, with the 65-plus age group not seeing much change. The habits from watching their parents and grandparents during the Six o’clock Swill are likely fairly entrenched.

There is still a way to go when it comes to improving our drinking habits, but we are on a good road, and it didn’t take prohibition to get us there.

The closing of New Zealand pubs at 6pm, know as the Six O’Clock Swill, was brought in as a temporary wartime measure in 1917, but lasted for 50 years.