Back in June the respected health journal The Lancet published a scary report on alcoholism in Russia, noting that booze kills more people than war, making it the country’s biggest public threat.  Now that we are well into August, the leadership is responding.  Dmitry Medvedev distributed some comments to the media which he apparently read to a meeting of Ministers in Sochi (“Alcoholism in our country is a national disaster (…) This is a centuries old problem and one cannot hope to solve it overnight.“)

His heart definitely appears to be in the right place, and it would be hard to disagree with Medvedev’s somber assessment of this difficult reality.  What was interesting were the comments made by Health Minister Tatyana Golikova, who made mention of Mikhail Gorbachev’s semi-prohibition control program from 1985-1990.  And then, at the bottom of this Reuters piece, a little note that the government may soon initiate a state monopoly of the vodka business – which of course would be worth quite a lot of money.  No word yet on whether the Kremlin Inc. distillery would keep the Putinka brand.