ALICE IN BLUNDERLAND 



Alice in Wonderland never saw anything 

 more fantastic and grotesque, yet legal, than 

 the action of the city-county liquor commission 

 last week. 



The liquor commission suspended the license 

 of a local retailer for four violations of selling 

 liquor below the "locally prevailing retail 

 price." 



The fantastic and grotesque aspect of this is 

 not only in the penalizing of a man for selling, 

 at low prices. It is that the penalizing is accord- 

 ing to law — in fact the city-county license com- 

 missioners had no alternative if they followed 

 strictly the provisions of the law. 



For this ridiculous situation we have to thank 

 the action of a past legislature which wrote into 

 the Revised Laws of Hawaii this section: 



"It shall be unlawful for any person holding a retail 

 dealer's license to sell any liquor under such license 

 at any price less than the locally prevailing price." 



And the law so stands today though an 

 abortive effort was made to amend it at the 

 1947 session of the legislature. 



And so a dealer who was endeavoring to pass 

 along to his customers savings which he was 

 able to make in liquor on hand, has been penal- 

 ized by the suspension of his license for one 

 week. % 



Alice in Blunderland is right! 



Why didn't the 1947 legislature go through 

 with the amendment which would have elimi- 

 nated *his ridiculous stipulation? 



Who put on the pressure or threw the sand 

 in the n>achinery of legislation? 



