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Booze-besotted Baltics wage war against the society-plaguing scourge: Alcohol (Excerpt)

Booze-besotted Baltics wage war against the society-plaguing scourge: Alcohol (Excerpt)

 

Source: Baltic Times

Linas Jegelevicius

2016-06-01

 

Throughout a dozen years, the three Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and particularly Lithuania have sat on top of the international booze consumption rankings, but now efforts to clamp down on the misery are stepped up and are panning out. Better off, for now, only is Estonia, where the output and consumption of all alcoholic beverages fell drastically last year. Latvia and Lithuania need to catch up; the situation especially worrisome remains in the latter, warns Dr. Lars Moeller, who leads the alcohol programme for the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) European Region.

Lithuania’s stats most worrisome

 

Moeller, the WHO’s representative for the European Region, is working on new alcohol consumption data in Europe, and the Baltics, too. Some of the findings were revealed at a high-profile conference on alcohol consumption in Vilnius last week. The full data will be out in September and will make a valuable document allowing for comparison between various European nations.

 

“A couple years ago, when we released our last report, Lithuania was number one in Europe in the statistics. What was so remarkable then was that alcohol consumption in Lithuania was 30 times higher than in Malta, which is on the bottom of the alcohol consumption rankings. Lithuania still remains on top of the statistics in the recent research,” Moeller told The Baltic Times.

 

What is characteristic of Lithuania when stacking it up against its other two neighbours in the region is that Lithuania’s alcohol consumption edged up around 17 per cent over the last four years, he says.

“The consumption, meanwhile, has increased little over the time in Latvia and was declining in Estonia,” the WHO official emphasised.

 

Estonia’s numbers are remarkable

 

Estonia is again a stand-out of the Baltics boasting a remarkable record in cutting alcoholic beverages’ imports, sales, and consumption. Whether the nation starts seeing a turnaround in the war against alcohol may be too soon to say, experts warn, but the country has been off to a promising start.

 

In Estonia, alcoholic beverage export sales last year went down by more than a fourth to 149.3 million euros and alcohol imports fell 19 per cent to 227.6 million euros, it appears from the annual alcohol market survey by Estonia’s Institute of Economic Research.

 

According to the survey, strong alcohol sales totaled 18.3 million litres, 7.4 per cent less than a year earlier. Beer sales amounted to 126 million litres, which marked a year-on-year decrease of 3.4 per cent. Sales of weak alcoholic beverages, at 39.2 million litres, were down by 8.4 per cent.

 

While the prices of goods and services declined slightly in Estonia last year, alcoholic beverages became 6.1 per cent more expensive mainly owing to a rise in excise duties.

 

A decline occurred in 2015 in the production volumes of all alcoholic beverages except for fruit and berry wines. The output of strong alcoholic beverages was 15.4 million litres, which represents a year-on-year drop of 22 per cent. The production of vodka fell by more than a fourth or 26 per cent.

 

Beer output last year was 139.8 million litres, almost 13 per cent less than the year before. The output of weak alcoholic beverages totaled 29.1 million litres, 2.6 per cent less than a year earlier, while the production of fruit and berry wines, at 9.8 million litres, was 2.4 per cent greater than in 2014.

 

http://www.baltictimes.com/booze-besotted_baltics_wage_war_against_the__society-plaguing_scourge__alcohol/