The Mena weekly star., 1921-11-24
CAN THE PROHIBITION LAWS BE
 ENF0RCED?

From Idabel, (Ok.) News.
 A special feature of law enforce ment was brought up by Judge Will liams of the federal court in the east ern district this week. This same idea has been proposed recently by Govern or Robertson in his Muskogee speech and by former Chief of Police Glitsch, in Oklahoma City. The burden of all of them is that the prohibition laws cannot be enforced.
 Unless a change is to be made in the type of officers who are asked to enforce these laws, these gentlemen are all correct. The liquor laws can not be enforced by liquor users; men who drink whiskey will never enforce the laws against the manufacture and the sale of whiskey. Under present conditions when a man drinks intoxi- eating liquors for beverage purposes he induces someone to become a law violator. He cannot secure them with out causing somebody to violate the law. That means the law must be a narticinant in he violation. and con- sequently will certainly wink at it. No law can maintain respect by being en- forced part of the time and winked at part of the time.
 Judge Williams is right in his statement that the framework of so- ciety has come to be involved in the enforcement of this liquor law. A great many other people agree with him in the belief that it was an i'll ad- vised section of the federal constitu- [ tion. If it cannot be enforced, our constitution is imperative, and if our constitution is imperative, our govern ment cannot persist. The prohibition laws must be enforced.
 , The state of Oklahoma is doing nothing today to enforce the prohibi- tion law. We have the laws clearly ! written into our constitution, and in our statutes, yet the state government is doing nothing whatever to cause those statutes to be respected. That is the natural outgrowth of the con- dition which permitted the last legis- lature to be thoroly saturated with strong drink during it's closing hours when liquor dispensary was conduct ed within a hundred feet of the en- trance to the legislative halls, and when every officer who entered the capitol was fully advised of what was going on by the acrid penetrating odor which permeated the entire building. Nothing was said or done about it. A great number of the officers them- selves participated in it. 1t is no req son for surprise that no financial pro- vision was made by those legislators for enforcing the prohibition law; that no means is now available for the state government to do anything in the enforcement of the law, and that consequently nothing is being done.
 This situation can be changed com lpletely in one election, if our people will see to it that no man who drinks i intoxicating liquors is. elected to po- sition which in any way requires him to enforce the liquor laws. We now have a provision in our constitution (which provides for the removal of any state officer for drunkenness. This needs to be strengthened. Not merely the man who gets drunk is unfit to bt ! an officer, but any man who purchases intoxicating liquors or participates 1T such purchases must be considered ab solutely unfit to hold office. We mus recognize that no man who induces ths violation of the law is unfit to enforce | the law against such violation.
 When this comes to pass it will hs | found that the liquor laws can be en | forced just as readily as any othel laws. When that day comes it will b' l unsafe for good citizens to turn theil basements into breweries and they will quit it. When the day comes il will be too hazardous for anybody tt engage in the manufacture of intoxi eating liquor and the moonshiner anc the bootlegger will go his way. Suci violations as will continue to exist vii be the work of Nhe genuine crimina for whom no one will have ary respect
 or consideration and against whom th Ioperation of the law will be certain as 1t is nova Rainst horse stealing