EDITORIAL: Alcoholic Russia

EDITORIAL

Alcoholic Russia

What girl doesn't love a Russian man loaded down with vodka?

As with most things where Russia, one of the most dishonest and dissembling nations on the face of the Earth, is concerned, it’s hard to get reliable information about the extent of the country’s epidemic of alcoholism.

But here’s a truly staggering factoid:  Even though 70% of Russia’s alcohol consumption comes in the form of vodka, Russians drink so much that their 30% residual consumption is still enough to make Russia the third-largest beer market on the planet.

Dig a little deeper, and you unearth facts that are truly breathtaking both in their implications and their contradictions.

In Juneof this year, for instance, the Kremlin-operated RIA Novosti newswire service reported that each Russian drinks 17 liters of spirits every year on average, and that this appalling abuse translates into 500,000 annual alcohol related fatalities.

But last month, RIA reported that the figure was 18 liters per person, more than double the level which the World Health Organization identifies as indicating a critical public health crisis.  It quoted Rashid Nurgaliyev, the Kremlin’s Interior Minister:  “The average age of people admitting to drinking alcohol has come down from 16 to 13 years. The total number of children aged 10-14 who drink alcoholic spirits rose 15.4% in 2008 (10.85 million).”  Despite these horrifying statistics, Russia still lets citizens drink at age 18 (whereas, in the US for instance, you have to be 21). Dima Medvedev himself has cited the 18-liter figure, so there must be something to it.

These figures are starkly at variance with those found in 2004 by WHO itself, which indicated Russians only consumed 10.58 liters (even at that level, though, ranking in the top 25 countries in the world for per capital alcohol consumption).  Has Russian consumption really increased by 80% in four years?  Or was WHO really that far off base?  In 2004, according to WHO, there was only one country on the planet with per capita consumption of 18 or more liters of alcohol.  Has Russia really vaulted into #2 position?  It seems clear that it has, all under the stewardship of Vladimir Putin.

And what is the response of the Medvedev regime to this crisis?  Even though 70% of the alcohol consumed by Russians is vodka, the government is planning to ignore that and impose a 200% excise tax on beer.  If you immediately think encouraging drinkers to move from beer to vodka (whose tax will only increase 10%) is, well, kind of insane — welcome to Vladimir Putin’s Russia!

Granted, he’s got an axe to grind, but what thinking person can disagree with Anton Artemiev, chief executive of St. Petersburg-based Baltika Brewery, when he warns:  “I find it very hard to understand the logic behind the disproportionate increase of excise duty on beer compared to strong alcohol, which will inevitably favor the consumption of hard alcohol, including vodka, and is bound to have a negative effect on alcohol abuse in the Russian society.”

We find it hard, too.  In fact, we think the people who came up with this “plan” were almost certainly drunk when they did so.  Not for a second do these geniuses stop to ask themselves whether maybe, just maybe, they ought to consider doing something about the sickening conditions of everyday life that drive Russians to drink.  And they don’t dare try to regulate vodka, knowing it’s one of the very few acts that could actually motivate Russians to take political action against the regime. So instead they flail about and end up enacting policy that can only make things much, much worse.

And so it goes in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.