Fake vodka killing more Russian men

MOSCOW (CP) Russian men are drinking themselves to death, particularly
from the poorquality vodka and vile moonshine flooding a lawless liquor
market.

"The state must do everything so that the people do not get poisoned by
fakes," President Boris Yeltsin said in a recent countrywide radio
address. "Moonshine liquor is the secondbiggest criminal enterprise in
Russia," after financial swindling, he said.

Russian men are among the world's heaviest drinkers, by some estimates
knocking back an average of one halflitre bottle of vodka per day.
Studies show Russian women tend to drink less.

Deaths due to alcohol poisoning have skyrocketed since the collapse of the
Soviet Union brought economic insecurity, high crime rates and greater
stress to Russian society. "If the people would have good jobs, high wages
and an optimistic view of the future, they will have no reason to drink,
or rather, to drink hard and turn into drunkards," said Yeltsin.

According to a tattletale book by the president's longtime friend and
bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, Yeltsin himself was a marathon
bingedrinker until a nearfatal heart attack compelled him to slow down
last year. About 35,000 Russians, mostly men, died in 1996 from alcohol
intoxication, roughly triple the 1990 figure.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that Russian, British and French
researchers at a Moscow conference released findings that suggest heavy
drinking is the primary cause of a sharp decline in life expectancy in
Russia in the early 1990s. That decline, particularly among men, "is the
steepest and most severe ever documented anywhere in the world," said
researcher David Leon of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine. "Basically we have a great increase in the amounts people are
drinking, combined with a disastrous fall in the quality of what they are
drinking," says Vladimir Nuzhni, a specialist at the staterun Narcology
Institute. When it junked the communist system, Russia also abolished the
centuriesold state vodka monopoly, allowing almost anyone to produce and
market alcoholic drinks. "It's completely out of control," says Nuzhni.

"Moonshiners make perfect imitations of legitimate products, right down to
labels and excise stamps. The only thing that's bad is the drink inside
the bottle, which can do you serious harm." The wave of bathtub liquor has
also deprived the cashstrapped government of one of its biggest sources
of revenue. Yeltsin said the state is getting only a fraction of the taxes
it should from liquor production and sales. Nuzhni estimates more than 50
per cent of all vodka for sale in Russia's street kiosks and open markets
is fake. "Most counterfeit vodka is just water mixed with grain spirits,
which won't kill you," he says. "On the other hand, some of the vodka
produced in regular factories is polluted with heavy metals or methyl
spirits and is very dangerous. Standards are very low, and there is
almost no enforcement these days." Many Russian men insist they can spot
the difference between good and bad vodka on sight. Some say they can
tell by shaking the bottle and counting the bubbles, or by holding it up
to light and watching how the rays refract.