The World Health Organization (WHO) delivered a triumphant relay. Following her advice, Russia launched a fight against drunkenness and alcoholism and achieved outstanding success. Per capita alcohol consumption has decreased by almost half since 2003. Accordingly, the number of diseases caused by drunkenness has decreased, and life expectancy has increased.
With these results, Russia is obligated to “increase excise taxes on alcoholic beverages, introduce a minimum retail price for vodka, introduce a special monitoring system for the production and sale of alcohol, and also prohibit the night trade in alcoholic beverages.”
As Carina Borges, head of the Alcohol and Illicit Drugs Program at the WHO Regional Office for Europe, points out, measures such as introducing a monitoring system, raising prices and limiting the availability of alcohol help save lives and reduce healthcare costs.
No doubt, over 15 years, wine has become less accessible and more expensive, and drinking has decreased. WHO and the following Russian authorities are inclined to perceive a direct causal relationship here. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. But, perhaps, the matter is not so much in prohibitions as in general socio-economic changes.
In the years of the late USSR, the prohibitions and restrictions that WHO sets itself to credit today were not less, but perhaps more. Which, however, did not help much. When L.I. Brezhnev drank the country with some wild inspiration, just as described in the poetry of the vagantas:
“The people are drinking male and female,
Urban and rustic
Fools and sages drink
Drinking spiracles and merchants,
The eunuchs drink and the revelers drink
Peacekeepers and warriors
The poor and the rich
Patients and doctors.
Drinking tramps, drinking nobles
People of all skin tones,
Servants drink and gentlemen,
Villages drink cities. ”
Gorbachev's convulsive actions led to a reduction in official consumption, but no one counted how much unofficial moonshine came from. Here the statistics are dark. Then the dungeons collapsed, and freedom and Royal spirit arrived. And since no one has canceled the Soviet cultural basis - “We all came out of the Gogol's“ Overcoat ”- the second edition of Vagant poetry began, which lasted all the holy nineties.
And then there was a steady decline noted by WHO, which has a well-known paradox. Brezhnev’s stability led to excessive drunkenness, and current stability, on the contrary, to moderate.
The reason is the life-giving breath of capitalism.
People hold on to work as they never did under Brezhnev. Then the popular joke “If the booze interferes with the work, then well, see it in FIG, this work” is no longer relevant. In the sense of finding and retaining a job, drinking was too expensive. Moreover, without any promotion of healthy lifestyle. Enough is the ghost of poverty that invisibly stands behind every employee.
But, by the way, in addition to the whip, consumerism brought gingerbread. Getting rid of the shortage of goods and the appearance of countless fast foods, coffee houses and other establishments in the service sector created a competition for alcohol that was absent under socialism. It used to be - apart from wine drinking, no miracles, but now the number of consumer miracles has increased very much.
Multifunctional shopping and entertainment centers criticize a lot, calling them temples of Mamon, but when visiting such a center, citizens are distracted from visiting the temple of Bacchus. Similarly, mass motorization (though urbanists strongly oppose it) is poorly compatible with wine drinking. That is, the humble-wretched consumerism - and again, without any healthy lifestyle propaganda - is a fair counterweight to the drunken drunkenness.
There are, of course, less pleasant competitors of alcohol. It's not even about drugs, but about the revolution of gadgets, when people sit in any eatery stupidly staring at the smartphone screen. Sometimes a flock of youth sits - and each clung to his electronic idol. Alcohol intoxication here is zero, but autistic intoxication - very much so.
So in the future, looking at humanoid robots, how would we not yet regret the good old villain with a sticker. At least it did not destroy socialization to zero.
But in any case, the bustle of WHO, and the bustle of the Ministry of Health, as well as "Sober Russia" etc. around the fight against alcoholism looks ridiculous. Decaying drunkenness is inevitably inferior to the new culture and new economy (how good this culture and this economy is another question). The stormy activity of the authorities (for them, however, is very profitable) is similar to the heroic efforts to change the seasons.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.