Try Them With “A

The P-NG Liquor Problem Try Them With “A Good Soft Drink”

Papua-new guinea natives should have a non-alcoholic beverage designed for them before they get to the stage of wanting to drink something stronger.

This is the view of Dr. William A. Scharffenberg, executive director of the International Commission for the Prevention of Alcoholism, who in November began an Aus tralasian tour which will extend to Papua-New Guinea.

Dr. Scharffenberg said in Sydney that Territory legislation which made it illegal for a native to drink alcohol should be retained.

The native could be educated away from liquor by giving him a non-alcoholic drink designed especially for his palate. Something of the sort had worked in India.

The taste for drink had to be acquired, said Dr. Scharffenberg.

In fact, most drinkers didn’t like the taste of it, but drank for social reasons.

The commission Dr. Scharffenberg

heads is financed by international contributions, and has its head quarters in Washington, DC.

Dr. Scharffenberg, who has always been a non-drinker, has travelled 600,000 miles on the job of prevention in the last five years, visiting more than 50 countries,

including Russia.

He’s had audiences in that time with the King of Sweden, King Saud, of Saudi Arabia, and the Presidents of Burma, Pakistan, India, the late President Magasay say, of the Philippines, among others.