E-Malt.com News article: 3315

Russia: Annual Russian beer consumption has doubled in the past five years, to about 113 pints per capita, with the biggest increases among young people, making this the fastest-growing market in the world after China. The sales boom has set pulses racing among global beer executives, who've invested heavily in Russian breweries. But it's triggered alarms among legislators and sociologists, who warn Russia already has 22,000 registered child alcoholics and drug addicts, and the trend is sharply on the rise.

"The situation is critical. We may lose an entire generation" to alcoholism, says Mikhail Grishankov, deputy head of the Duma's security committee. Under Russian law, as well as in the popular culture, beer is nothing more than a thirst-quenching soft drink. Shops and kiosks require no special license to sell beer, and minors can often be spotted freely buying it, The Christian Science Monitor revealed on September 23.

While beer sales in Russia grew by 14 percent in the first half of this year, sales of hard liquor also rose, by 4.2 per cent, according to the state statistics committee. Since Russia's population has been shrinking by an estimated half million people per year, overall alcohol consumption would seem to be disastrously on the rise, observers note. By contrast, US consumption was flat last year for the first time in seven years, though observers attribute that, in part, to low-carbohydrate diets. Americans drink more beer than Russians - 172 pints per capita in 2003, according to Beer Marketer's Insights, an industry observer - but hard-alcohol consumption in the US is much lower.

Russia's Health Ministry says the average Russian consumes 5 gallons of vodka annually and that the rate is not falling. Since bootleg liquor production remains a major factor, particularly in the Russian countryside, all official estimates are hazy and probably on the low side. One in seven Russians is thought by the ministry to be an alcoholic, 40,000 Russians die each year from extreme intoxication, and alcohol abuse is implicated in 70 percent of the country's approximately 300,000 annual accidental deaths.

The new rules prohibit any beer commercials on TV between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., or in publications whose themes deal with youth, health, or sports. Billboards are banned within 100 yards of a hospital, school, or athletic center. Starting in January, breweries will be further barred from using human, animal, or cartoon characters in their ads. That should effectively halt the parade of seminude women, stern military heroes, animated peasants, and frolicking bears who've been plugging beer on TV until now. Nor may ads offer any suggestion that consuming beer "will help achieve social, sporting or personal success, or will improve one's physical or mental condition," according to the new rules. Similar restrictions on hard liquor advertising, as well as a ban on open public consumption, have been in place since 1995.

Television networks, which stand to lose some 10 percent of their advertising revenue according to the Brewer's Union, a trade group, have protested the new law. Sports teams, still struggling since state funding collapsed with the Soviet Union, say the ban on beer ads in their stadiums could cripple them. Russia's ice hockey and soccer federations sent a joint letter to parliament last month asking it to rescind the rule.

Some experts insist that the rapid expansion of beer consumption justifies radical steps. "Alcohol abuse is steadily growing in Russia, and beer drinking among young people is the most troubling new phenomenon," says Natalia Vanisova, a researcher at the Institute of Narcology in Moscow. "There is no doubt that the flood of advertising has played a role in the alcoholization of life."

Some reports, promoted by the brewing companies, have implied that beer might be having a civilizing impact on the Russians by weaning them off their traditional tipple, vodka. "We do not believe the claims [about rising alcoholism] are borne out by independent studies," says Alexei Kedrin, head of public relations at Baltika, one of Russia's leading breweries, based in St. Petersburg. He cites a Gallup poll that found about 30 percent of people between the ages of 25 and 55 gave up drinking hard liquor between 1997 and 2003. "Drinking patterns in Russia are shifting," he says. "People are choosing low-alcohol beverages, and that reduces the overall alcohol intake of the population."


25 September, 2004