Newspapers / Jones County Journal (Trenton, … / Oct. 5, 1967, edition 1 / Page 4
Part of Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.) / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
This pair of king-sized backwoods stills is shown just after they were blown up by ABC officers last week just north of Kinston. Each was built of welded sheet steel, 12 feet long, six feet wide and three feet diep, they had a capacity of about 1,500 gallons each, and were fired by at least four oil burners each. The cap of these stills was a 55-gallon oil drum, which is frequently the size of an en tire still. The condenser was a 500-gallon vat. They were capable of turning out 600 gallons of non-taxpaid whisky per week and officers estimate they had been in operation eight to 12 weeks. — See Story on Page 4. In the past week Lenoir Coun ty ABC officers destroyed two backwoods booze factories with rated capacities of 1,000 and 3,000 gallons each. These are among the largest illicit elixir factories recently found and destroyed in this neck of the woods. Based on a one-for-ten return these bootleg industries had a capacity of turning out some thing near 1,600 gallons of pure headache drops per week. One had obviously been in produc tion for several months and the other was dynamited before it made the first drop of liquid dynamite. No one can possibly know what percentage of the booze consumed in the United States comes from these stumphole production centers, because the owners and operators are re luctant to reveal their output and income figures to anyone, much less government-type sta tisticians. But the government keeps ex ceedingly good books on the legal grog trade, and it is a considerable part of the nation al economy. For the last fully documented year (1965) legal production of Your Medicine Can Cost You Less Have Your Prescriptions Filled at MEDICAL CENTER PHARMACY 905 N. Queen Street Kinston, N. C. those assorted alcoholic bever ages went thisaway: Across the nation 197 brew eries made 100,306,000 barrels of 31 gallons each of beer — or 3.109.517.000 gallons, or 15.5 gal lons for every man, woman and child in the land. In the same year.153 ,legal dis tilleries squeezed out 117,930 000 gallons of booze, the vine yards of the nation fermented 565.055.000 gallons of “still” wine and 6,358,000 gallons of effervescent wines. And these figures do not include all the Scotch hauled in from Scotland, wines from a dozen or more lands, and a smaller assortment of whiskies and beers from other countries. These imports, in dollars and cents added up to $426,000,000 in ’65. The per capita consumption of these beverages amounted in ’65 to 1.35 gallons of booze per year, 16.19 gallons of beer and. .95 gallons of wine. The kind of booze milked out of . backwoods operations such as that pictured with this article quite correctly is called, by the government “non-taxpaid”. To the drinker there are countless kinds of booze: Bour bon, Scotch, rye,' blends, gin, vodka, co^iac, brandy, rum and sometimes combinations of these. But so far as the govern ment is concerned there are on ly two kinds: Taxpaid and nQn taxpaid. On that taxpaid variety in 1965 there were $3,793,000,000 (that’s billions) paid in federal taxes and state governments col lected another $917,000,000. , ■ The federal tax is $10.50 per proof gallon on the hard stuff. That ‘proof gallon” phrase means 50 per cent alcohol by ■volume. On beer the tax levied by the “feds” is $9 for each 31-galJon barrel. ' The federal tax on wine be gins at 17 cents per gallon for wine with not over 14 per cent alcohol, 67 cents per gallon for wines with more than 14 per cent but not over 21 per cent alcohol and those wines between 21 and 24 per cent alcohol are taxed at $2.25 per gallon. Effer vescent wines are taxed at $3.40 per gallon, liqueurs mid cor dials are taxed at $1.92 per gal lon. Then comes the state tax after all this federal collecting is done. For fiscal ’65-66 North Caro lina collected $12,349,350 from liquor taxes (12 £>er cent sales tax) another $13,008,328 in beer tax and $1,617481 wine tax. Then comes the county ABC store tax: This amounted to an- ’ other $11,451,301 in the most recent fiscal year reported. The North Carolina tax on beer is $10.50 per barrel- — worse than the federal, of 3M> cents per 12-ounce container, or 9.38 cents for containers ov er 12 ounces up to a quart. The state wine tax is 60 cents per gallon for unfortified wine and $2.40 per gallon for fortified wine — which is wine to which grain alcohol has been added. Legal booze sales in North Carolina for ’65-66 totalled $118, 304,629; on which counties, cities and special alcoholic re habilitations funds took out an other big chunk. Lenoir County grossed $1, 692,682 that year, set aside $11, 358 for law enforcement, an other $30,881 for sobering up drunks and reported a net prof it of $214,904. Jones County for the same year grossed $346,237, with net (Continued on page 5) JARMAN FUNERAL HOME . . . tVhere Your Trust Is Sacred And Your Wishes Cared For . . . Dial JA 3-5143 Kinston, N. C. Wallace, Langley & Barwick ATTORNEYS AT LAW ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT Mr. F. Lee Weaver WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH THEIR FIRM IN THE GENERAL PRACTICE OF LAW AT 112 N. INDEPENDENT STREET, KINSTON, N. C, “Helping to build a better Livestock Market for Eastern North Carolina” Top prices paid for .
Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.)
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Oct. 5, 1967, edition 1
4
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75