Beer in Russia will become an alcoholic drink for the first time on New Year’s Day. Many Russians consider beer a soft drink – a light refresher that can be guzzled on the way to work or sucked down in great quantities before a picnic and a swim in the river.
Hard drinkers sniff at its weakness, as the saying goes: “Beer without vodka is like throwing money to the wind.” But the hung-over nation woke up to a new and troubling reality on New Year’s when beer in Russia was declared an alcoholic drink for the very first time.
Until now the brew has been considered a foodstuff along with all other drinks under 10 per cent in strength. It could be bought from street kiosks or at railway stations, as well as from countless 24-hour corner shops, just like fruit juice or mineral water. Beer’s new status as alcohol, however, will prevent retail sales from street outlets such as kiosks, railway stations, bus stops and petrol stations – which account for up to 30 per cent of sales – as well as preventing sales between 11pm and 8am, and introducing a ban on television advertising of beer.
The new restrictions were signed off by then President Dmitry Medvedev in 2011 as part of an attempt to counter alcohol abuse, which he earlier called a “national calamity”.
The average Russian drinks the equivalent of 32 pints of pure alcohol per year and about 500,000 deaths annually are thought to be drink-related. That includes a large number of about 30,000 annual road accident deaths and of several thousand cases of drowning.
