Pubdate: Wednesday, October 1, 1997 Source: Halifax Daily News Contact: 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.