Vodka for the People!
Russia’s government has been urged (by the head of Russia’s union of wine and spirits producers) to legislate to introduce “people’s vodka”. This “people’s vodka” should be a “cheap, but safe and regulated drink” to help Russians who are too poor to buy genuine vodka.
It appears that this call is being made because many Russians have been drinking vodka substitutes and killing themselves through fake alcohol poisonings. Some “30% of Russian vodka-drinkers struggle to afford genuine supplies” and so turn to the potentially lethal substitutes, which killed 40,000 people last year in Russia.
Why don’t the vodka manufacturers make this cheap vodka themselves? If 30% of Russia’s vodka drinkers can’t afford to buy the real stuff, surely there is a huge market out there to be tapped! As much as I applaud the idea of cheap alcohol (being a debt-ridden student) this is something which the suppliers should be doing themselves, not asking the government to do for them.
There is a nice contrast, however, between this and the constant calls for restrictions on alcohol drinking here in Britain, with most ideas revolving around charging more for alcohol. The Russian example should serve as a message to those who make the claim that high alcohol prices put people off drinking - all it does is force people who don’t want to steal to afford it instead to drink unsafe and potentially fatal substitute cocktails.
Source: BBC, United Press International
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I was forced to drink Tesco’s own bitter when I was a student, such was my penury. That really was a dangerous brew.