The Times published an article that tells about "the terrible cost of Russia's love affair with vodka".
According to the study, results of which have been published in the medical journal of The Lancet, in Russia, three quarters of deaths among men and half of deaths among women aged 15-54 were attributable to alcohol abuse.
"The mortality rate in Russia in this age group was five times higher for men and three times higher for women than in Western Europe", The Times writes.
Professor David Zaridze, who led the international research team, calculated that alcohol had killed three million Russians since Mikhail Gorbachev tried and failed to restrict sales in 1987.
He added: "This loss is similar to that of a war", the newspaper writes.
The study analyzed the deaths of almost 49,000 people between 1990 and 2001 in Tomsk, Barnaul and Biysk, three industrial cities in Siberia with typical mortality rates. It concluded that alcohol was the cause of 52 per cent of mortalities; 13 times greater than the worldwide average, The Times concludes.
The growth of heroin smuggling from Afghanistan is the main reason of the tense situation with drug addiction in Russia, officials from the so-called "Federal Drug Control Service (FDCS)" of Russian believe.
"In Russia we have up to 2.5 million drug addicts, mainly aged between 18 and 39. The main reason for this situation, we believe, is incessant flow of heroin from Afghanistan", FDCS official said.
"80 thousand new addicts are being registered every year. 82 people die of drugs every night. This is 30 thousand people in a year, 2 times more than during the war in Afghanistan", the chief of FDCS Viktor Ivanov said earlier.
"Russia is not simply on the needle of Afghan opiates, but also a world leader of their use. Russia today is the main victim of the Afghani narcotraffic.
"If the situation in Afghanistan will not be broken, changed, then in 5-10 years we would have a drug addict in every family. This is not a fantasy, but a real prognosis", said Ivanov said.
Thus, Russia is losing every year up to 30 thousand young people of the most capable age.
We would like to remind that earlier the western experts have indicated that the total human losses of Russia during the Putin's reign have increased to wartime level, when people are quickly decreased in number as a result of fierce and long-term war.
Department of Monitoring, Kavkaz Center
Publication time: 27 June 2009, 12:21
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