Most Russian Deaths From Ages 15-54 Caused By Party Fouls

Russia news!  This tidbit is less funny but far more shocking than most of the Russian hijinks I post here.  According to a recent study,

“Excessive alcohol consumption in Russia, particularly by men, has in several recent years caused more than half of all the deaths at ages of 15-54 years.”

A United Nations report said in April that poor diet, leading to heart disease, heavy drinking and the high incidence of violent deaths may cut Russia’s present population of some 142 million to around 131 million by 2025.

Which is catastrophic.  After the jump, more eye-opening statistics about just how unbelievably f*cking drunk Russians are, and how the epidemic of alcoholism is leaving the country in the gutter.  

Russian life expectancy, which in superpower times approached that of Western European countries, has fallen through the floor.  While Russia is a developed nation, its life expectancy reflects that of a war-torn third-world misery-hole.

With the end of Communism, moreover, life expectancy went into erratic decline, plummeting a frightful four years between 1992 and 1994, recovering somewhat through 1998, but then again spiraling downward. In 2006—the most recent year for which we have such data—overall Russian life expectancy at birth was over three years lower than it had been in 1964.

By 2005, male life expectancy at birth was fully fifteen years lower in the Russian Federation than in Western Europe. It was also five years below the global average for male life expectancy, and three years below the average for the less developed regions (whose levels it had exceeded, in the early 1950s, by fully two decades). Put another way, male life expectancy in 2006 was about two and a half years lower under Putin than it had been in 1959, under Khrushchev… For males, it will be in the same league as that of Cambodia, Ghana, and Eritrea.

Russians born today are living shorter lives than Russians born 50 years ago.  Think about the advances in medical care and sanitation made in the last 50 years.  Crazy.  Here’s what’s happening:

Russia’s patterns of death from injury and violence (by whatever provenance) are so extreme and brutal that they invite comparison only with the most tormented spots on the face of the planet today. The five places estimated to be roughly in the same league as Russia as of 2002 were Angola, Burundi, Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. To go by its level of mortality injury alone, Russia looks not like an emerging middle-income market economy at peace, but rather like an impoverished sub-Saharan conflict or post-conflict society.

What’s going on here?  Cardiac disease, liver failure, and death by injury?

Professor Alexander Nemstov, perhaps Russia’s leading specialist in this area, argues that Russia’s adult population—women as well as men—puts down the equivalent of a bottle of vodka per week.

By another estimate,

Russia’s annual consumption at 15 litres of pure alcohol per capita, including children and elderly people. This compares to just 6 litres in 1864, he said.

He estimated Russia had some 2.5 million registered alcoholics and about the same number of unregistered ones.

They make them register!  Do they get a card?  ”Step out of the car, sir.”  ”Sorry officer, registered alcoholic.”  ”Oh, well, go on home then.  You be safe.”  Or maybe it’s more of a card for Two-for-Tuesday shot specials?

It’s an easy thing to joke about, Russians getting splattered all the time, but the truth is that the occurence of deaths by alcohol poisoning in Russia is 23 times higher than in America, despite that Russia’s population is half the size of ours.  30,000 people in the country die each year from alcohol poisoning…

Because in Soviet Russia… handle of vodka kills YOU!!!

Sources: Reuters, World Affairs Journal.