Press Release, 08.11.2016
According to Lev Shlosberg, Chairman of the Pskov regional branch of the YABLOKO party and MP in the Pskov regional parliament, the main reasons for the growing alcohol abuse in Russia are poverty and lack of medical care. He said this in his interview of the Rosbalt information agency.
Shlosberg indicates that low level of employment, general decrease in the emotional and psychological background of life, which could be described as “hopeless”, leads to the fact that more people are abusing alcohol.
Shlosberg also notes that the regions that are in socio-economic depression are characterised by high alcoholisation, as a rule, the regions topping poverty ratings also lead in the ratings of alcohol abuse.
According to Shlosberg, there is a direct correlation between the development of the healthcare network and mortality from alcohol.
“There is not a single sobering-up station in the region. Another question is how these sobering-up stations functioned. These institutions did not comply with normal human standards. But there was a system of identification and prevention. That is, some kind of framework was established. This framework has been lacking for many years already,” Shlosberg says.
Shlosberg also notes that the system for voluntary recovery from alcoholism is virtually absent at present.
In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the fight against alcoholism in Russia would continue, but not by the [cruel] methods used in the mid 1980s.
He also added that other areas related to the increase of life expectancy in Russia should not be neglected.
Source: https://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2016/11/07/n_9304871.shtml