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Eastern Europe
August 18, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
To sum up all of the above, the state programme is likely to repeat the fate of the modernisation programme in wood processing and the cement industry. Public funds are likely to be spent inefficiently, and instead of economic growth
the economy would receive businesses that
Two in five Russians (39%) are teetotalers
bne IntelliNews
Two in five Russians (39%) are teetotalers, accord- ing to a survey by state-owned pollster Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (VTsIOM).
Alcohol consumption has been falling steadily for years as life gets better in Russia. Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 hitting the bottle led to a catastrophic collapse in life expectancy; male life spans fell to only 56 years, but since then have recovered to 72.4 years, according to the most recent survey.
And the number of people abandoning booze has also been rising as Russia’s middle class is be- coming increasingly health conscious. In 2009,
a quarter of respondents said they did not drink alcohol, but that is up to the current 39%, with women and 18 to 24-year-olds drinking even less: 47% of both these categories don't drink at all.
require constant financial support from the state to repay loans and borrowings. The only beneficiaries in this programme would be public officials who control procurement of equipment for modernisation.
Amongst the Russian elite absence is quite com- mon. President Vladimir Putin drinks rarely ac- cording to reports, while former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov was famously teetotal. Also Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev does not drink, preferring the bright green non-alcoholic Tarkhun beverage, invented in Georgia, popular amongst Russian children and made from tarragon.
The survey found that 59% of citizens say they drink “from time to time”, but in the overwhelming majority of cases not more than a few times
a month.
The majority of Russians (80%) said they are aware that alcohol has a negative impact on their health. Only 15% of respondents believe that alco- hol is harmless to the body.
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