Russia’s got a drinking problem.  Okay, it always has.  The reputation is true, they drink vodka like 6 year old’s drink Kool Aid!  And then they too crash through walls.

I was intrigued when I saw the headline of After 72 Die Putin Tightens Limits on Consumer Products High in Alcohol for these reasons:

• 72 people died drinking a “scented bath lotion” – why would anybody do that?
• “Putin Tightens Limits” – has it reached that point where he’s that granular in their government that he’s personally overseeing what’s sold in stores?  There’s no Russian FDA for this?
• the “scented bath lotion” was consumed even though the label said it was not for internal consumption because Russians are apparently great label readers and noticed that it said it was made with ethyl alcohol.  It wasn’t.  It was made with poisonous methyl alcohol.  Was that a typo?  72 people would be alive today if not for an extra “m”.
• The scented bath lotion went for about $1.00 a bottle.  An average bottle of vodka starts at about $3.00!  Wow! if you’re looking for cheap Christmas gifts or to get wasted it’s friggin’ cheap there!
• The real news here:

“The number of Russians who die from alcohol poisoning has been rising in recent years, and reached 14,250 in 2015, according to the state statistics service. Illegal surrogate products like the bath lotion account for about 20 percent of the market, and demand for them is growing very rapidly, according to RBC, a Russian news website.”

Wha?  That’s like the number of people killed by handguns here (not including suicides).

14,250 alcohol poisonings in a year!!  In a country of about 146,000,000 people.

By contrast: in the U.S. it’s about 6 a day or 2,190 a year.  That’s in a country of 310,000,000.

The Russian hillbilly heroin is bath lotion.  While legitimate alcohol products are their handguns.