Alcohol consumption in Russia has fallen: but is it 80%?

Allegedly, Russians are consuming 80 percent less alcohol than five years ago. This figure was put out by the Minister of Health, Veronika Skvortsova, recently. The BBC did a reality check and published its own findings on 27 January 2018.

The verdict: alcohol consumption has dropped … but not by 80 percent.

As says the BBC, there are two sets of statistics – one collected by the Russian statistics agency, Rosstat, and one by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The Rosstat figures are based only on official sales of alcohol, which have certainly fallen, but by about 30 percent, not 80 percent. It’s the total amount drunk presented in litres of pure alcohol, divided by the total population.

Rosstat has not yet published its figures for alcohol sales for 2017. Nevertheless, the data available for January to November 2017 suggest that alcohol consumption actually increased from the previous year.

Sales of vodka jumped ten percent between January and November compared with the same period of 2016.

On average, Russians drank the equivalent of 6.6 litres of pure alcohol last year, according to Rosstat. Reportedly, this included: 6.6 litres of vodka and spirits, 57 litres of beer and 7.3 litres of wine, sparkling wine and champagne.

However, the figure from the WHO for the same period is more than double Rosstat’s, at 13.9 litres of pure alcohol per person in 2016.

Part of that is because the WHO figure is divided by the population over the age of 15, not the total population.

The BBC also points out that illicit alcohol is not included in any set of data.

Clearly, unofficial sales are difficult to measure and the WHO’s figure could be an overstatement. Observers put the volume of illicit alcohol at less than ten percent of overall consumption.

All this is to say – de facto alcohol consumption in Russia is anybody’s guess.

Who is right? Alcohol sales in Russia: Rosstat versus WHO