It’s not nice to stereotype but sometimes it can’t be
helped. Russians. I bet you read that word and thought about
vodka. Of course not all Russians are
heavy drinkers or alcoholics; Vladimir Putin is a sober man. However, in a 2011 article published in the
World Policy Journal, Heidi Brown explains just how bad the alcoholism problem
is in Russia.
In the
United States roughly 5% of the adult male population suffers from alcoholism
with 13% being “heavy episodic drinkers.”
In Russia, 16% of men are alcoholics and 22% are heavy episodic
drinkers. Want some more figures? In half of all cases alcohol is at least
partly responsible for the deaths of all Russian men between the ages of 15 and
54. 23,000 Russians die each year from
alcohol poisoning alone.
Russia has
a serious problem with alcoholism and an historic one at that. Throughout the Soviet era and reigns of the
Tsars before, the massive quantities of alcohol consumed by the Russian
population has had a sizeable impact on both the nation’s overall health and
its economy. Given the longevity of the problem
you might expect that the Russian government(s) would have taken a very
proactive role in responding to the out of control alcoholism. However, that is not the case. As Brown describes, corrupt
business/government relationships work against any and all attempts to
modernize Russia’s medical treatment of alcoholism especially considering the
vast revenues the government reaps from alcohol taxation. Although programs like AA are beginning to
appear in Russia, treatment for alcoholism is still largely based in
pharmaceutical remedies and the condition itself is considered to more a
criminal problem than a medical one.
So the next
time you’re fretting over a Daily Collegian article about State Patty’s Day
just think about what a weekend in Murmansk must be like. За родну, товарищи!
Brown, Heidi. “Drinking Games: Can
Russia Admit It Has a Problem?” World Policy Journal 28.2 (2011):
111-121.
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