The World Health Organization put the decrease down to measures brought in under sport-loving President Vladimir Putin, including restrictions on alcohol sales and the promotion of healthy lifestyles |
Russia might still have a reputation as a nation of hard drinkers, but a report by the World Health Organization published Tuesday showed alcohol consumption has dropped by 43 percent since 2003.
The WHO put
the decrease down to a raft of measures brought in under sport-loving President
Vladimir Putin, including restrictions on alcohol sales and the promotion of
healthy lifestyles.
"The
Russian Federation has long been considered one of the heaviest-drinking
countries in the world," the report said, adding that alcohol was a major
contributor to a spike in deaths in the 1990s.
"However,
in recent years these trends have been reversed."
The study
showed a 43 percent drop in alcohol consumption per capita from 2003 to 2016,
driven by a steep decline in the consumption of bootleg booze.
The authors
said this trend was a factor in increased life expectancies, which reached a
historic peak in 2018, at 78 years for women and 68 years for men.
In the
early 1990s, male life expectancy was just 57 years.
Last Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev led an anti-alcohol campaign with partial prohibition,
which brought down consumption from the mid-1980s until 1990.
But after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, alcohol consumption exploded, continuing to
rise until the start of the 2000s.
Under
Putin, Russia has introduced measures including a ban on shops selling any
alcohol after 11 pm, increases in the minimum retail price of spirits and an
advertising blackout.
Earlier WHO
figures showed Russian adults now drink less alcohol on average than their
French and German counterparts.
Moscow has
also launched a drive against smoking, last week announcing a ban on lighting
up even on private balconies.
Tobacco use
plummeted by more than a fifth between 2009 and 2016, down to 30 percent of Russians
smoking according to the most recent Global Adult Tobacco Survey.
The World
Health Organization put the decrease down to measures brought in under
sport-loving President Vladimir Putin, including restrictions on alcohol sales
and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.
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