MOSCOW (AP) – Some Russian officials are daring to think the seemingly unthinkable in the land of vodka – banning the sale of alcohol once a week in the country’s two main cities.
Although the initiative is only in its infancy, both the head of the national consumer protection agency and a top member of the Public Chamber, a Kremlin advisory body, on Wednesday latched onto the idea amid media reports that the Moscow and St. Petersburg city governments were taking the prospect seriously.
The heavy media attention underlined the paradox of alcohol for Russia – while it may be as much a part of the country’s identity as snow and Pushkin poems, it is also a severe problem. Heavy drinking is cited as one of the main factors in Russia’s high mortality rate: the life expectancy for Russian males born in 2006 is just 61 years, according to a U.N. Development Program report.
The last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, famously failed at his attempt to tame alcoholism in the 1980s by imposing production limits and boosting prices.
In the early years of post-Soviet Russia, alcohol could be bought around-the-clock from kiosks on almost every street and guzzled on any sidewalk or subway car. By 2013, kiosk sales were banned, alcohol sales at grocery stores cut off from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. and consumption in public spaces forbidden.