Bottoms Down

I'm all in favor of a good drink every now and then but damn this is crazy.

From MSNBC...

Drinking caused more than half of deaths among Russians aged 15 to 54 in the turbulent era following the Soviet collapse.

Professor David Zaridze, estimated that the increase in alcohol consumption since 1987, the year when then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's restrictions on alcohol sales collapsed, cost the lives of 3 million Russians who would otherwise be alive today. "This loss is similar to that of a war," Zaridze said.

Russians currently consume almost twice the global average, the equivalent of 1.64 gallons of pure ethanol alcohol per year, the report found. Although life expectancy here has risen slightly in recent years, Russia still has one of the lowest in Europe.

A previous study carried out by British and Russian researchers and published in the Lancet in 2007 estimated that drinking alcohol not meant for consumption like cologne and antiseptics was responsible for nearly half of all deaths among working-age Russian men.

Seems like AA could have a field day in Russia. Just say nyet guys!