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'You’re Not a Person if You Don’t Drink.' How This Tiny European Country Developed the World's Worst Drinking Problem

https://time.com/5654052/moldova-drinking-problem/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief&utm_content=20190909&xid=newsletter-brief

Although alcohol consumption levels have overall decreased in Europe, former Soviet countries like Moldova are still home to the world’s heaviest drinking populations.

And it’s taking a devastating toll on public health. Alcohol contributes to the deaths of one in five Russians, and it’s among the main reasons for lower life expectancy in the ex-USSR compared to Western countries.

In Moldova, where liver cirrhosis is more common than anywhere else in Europe, men live to an average age of 68 and women, 75. Europe’s averages are 79 and 84 respectively.

In the Soviet Union, little was done to curb excessive drinking. It was even encouraged as alcohol production was a very profitable industry for the Soviet government, according the Marya Levintova, a public health expert on Russia. Levintova and a number of other other academics including Mark Schrad said that alcohol in post-Soviet countries has been a “statecraft”.

While generating revenue for the government, it has also stymied dissent and promoted autocracy. In his 2014 book Vodka Politics: Alcohol, Autocracy and the Secret History of the Russian State, Schrad wrote that “vodka became an instrument of state domination.”

This perception also exists in Moldova, Europe’s poorest country, where corruption and political instability are rife. “It’s a way of keeping the population passive,” says Ivan Lungu, a 38-year-old recovering alcoholic, who quit drinking a couple of years ago. “Drunk people don’t protest.”