Moscow Hopes New Law Requiring Interior Ministry to Destroy Methanol will Reduce Alcohol Deaths

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 12 – Over the last decade, 111,000 Russians died from ingesting methanol often getting it not from cleaning fluids as many imagine but from illicit leakage from the shelves of the Russian interior ministry which up to now had stored it rather than destroying a fluid that can be deadly in even small amounts.

            At the end of October, Russia’s Federal Assembly amended laws so as to require the ministry to destroy rather than retain the methanol it often seizes, in the hopes that less of this harmful drug will end up in the hands of those who want to profit by selling it to consumers (cherta.media/story/konfiskovannyj-metanol-budut-unichtozhat-a-ne-xranit-godami-na-skladax/).

            One of the reasons that methanol is so dangerous is that it is indistinguishable in taste from ethyl alcohol but give those who ingest it a more rapid form of inebriation before harming them more radically and often leading to their deaths. The interior ministry has sought to fight this scourge by confiscating methanol. But until now, it hasn’t destroyed it.’

            Sometimes makers of samogon, the Russian word for moonshine, put methanol in their products, and even more often, Russians drink other liquids that contain large amounts of this dangerous drug such as cleansers. As a result, there is a black market in methanol – and apparently some on interior ministry shelves have been involved

            As prices for state-regulated alcohol have risen because of higher taxes and inflation, Russians are increasing turning to these alternatives. This year, purchases of samogon equipment rose by 37 percent; and now Russians ate “no fewer than 2.4 million such apparatus” at home. As a result, samogon now forms “about 20 percent” of hard liquor consumed in Russia.

            That makes Moscow’s claims about declining alcohol consumption meaningless and suggests that Russians are now turning to samogon or even worse surrogates containing methanol than in the past. The new law is intended to make it harder for producers to get this dangerous drug. Whether it will work remains to be seen. 

            The real question is why did the Russian government allow the interior ministry to retain rather than destroy stocks of methanol for so long.