Russia and vodka are synonymous and it is hard to imagine life without vodka, in Russia. There water is also called vodka. To prevent themselves from bone chilling cold, Russians have resorted to vodka. But the same vodka is now like poison for them, because Russians are now dying after consuming it heavily .
After conducting test on over 1.5 lakh people, researchers have come to the conclusion that vodka has become a major cause of death in Russia. Between 1999 and 2010, the figures of people drinking vodka in Barnaul, Bisk and Tomsk were collected and they were asked how much liquor they drink. During the research, 8,000 people lost their lives. Then the attention was paid on the cause of their death. It was found in the results that those who drink one to one and a half liter of vodka in a week, the risk of dying by the age of 55 increases to 35 percent.
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Research has shown that more than one quarter of Russian males die before the age of 55 years. When compared to other countries, it was seen that in the UK, only seven percent of people die at the age of 55, whereas in the US it is only one percent. The average age of people in Russia is 64 years and it is among the 50 countries in the world where mortality rate are the highest .
Sir Richard Peto of Oxford University, who was heading this research, said that on average, every person in Russia drinks 20 liters of vodka annually. The people of Russia really drink plenty of liquor and they have a habit that they continue drinking vodka even after they are completely drunk, and this is dangerous. In Russia, local vodka is available cheaply. Comparing to Europe, he said, there is a lot of drinking culture in Finland and Poland too, but there is no threat of death like Russia.
Peto said that women in Russia also drink a lot, but no research has been done on their health. David Leon of the London School of Hygiene told, if you are drinking vodka, then your body will start accumulating a large amount of ethanol, while this not in the case of beer. He said that drinking is part of culture in Russia and it is important to change the habits of people. In Russia it is not considered wrong that you keep drinking till you get completely drunk, it shows your masculinity and you are expected that you drink more.
It has been told in the report that Mikhail Gorbachev had imposed a number of restrictions on liquor in 1985. At that time, liquor consumption declined by 25 per cent and death rate also came down. But with the end of communism, once again the consumption of liquor increased rapidly and along with mortality rate.