As part of an anti-alcoholism campaign, authorities in the Russian region of Krasnoyarsk have banned the sale of a brand of bath-cleaning liquid. The spirit-based liquid was a popular drink among some of the locals, Regnum news agency reported Tuesday.
“The liquid is 95 percent proof industrial alcohol,” the head of the Pirovsky district, Alexander Pokhodin, said.
“It is sold in plastic bottles of 250 g, costs just 20 rubles ($0.70), and the local people love to drink it,” he added.
The cleaner, a legal product, could not be barred by administrative means. However, after talks with the administration head, local shop owners agreed it was best to stop selling it.
“I offered them statistics of deaths caused by industrial spirit poisonings,” Pokhodin said. “And although I could not ban the liquid, I asked them to stop selling it, and in three weeks it disappeared from the shops.”
More than 13,000 people died in Russia of “accidental alcohol poisoning” in the first four months of this year alone, the AFP news agency reports. High death rates from drinking are even worse due to the consumption of “surrogate” alcohols — products that contain alcohol but are not intended for consumption, such as aftershave products and cleaning fluids.
