– Gennady Grigorievich, the idea that alcohol should only be sold to people over the age of 21 is being discussed. The idea is not entirely correct, in my opinion, because it goes against my youthful thinking. Imagine, you can get married at 16 (under special circumstances), join the army at 18, and drink alcohol at 21. Why such injustice?
– Well, sarcasm is, of course, a good thing, but there is quite a serious scientific basis for setting the age for the sale of alcohol. Because a person, despite receiving a passport at the age of 14, becomes a politically wealthy citizen at the age of 18, from the point of view of human physiology, finally completes his physical development at the age of 21; and if you start drinking earlier, the younger you are, the greater the chances of falling into pathological dependence and becoming an alcoholic. Therefore, a number of countries have set exactly this age for the sale of alcohol – 21 years.
– For example?
– For example, the United States of America. Our closest neighbors are Kazakhstan.
-Won’t the youth rebel?
– It will not rebel. Today we have a unique tendency: more than half of our youth have an extremely negative attitude towards alcohol consumption. They believe that they have not drunk and will not drink. And that is why the alcohol producers are even upset about this: how can it be, Russia will not become alcoholic, let’s do something. (Here it is also sarcasm! – AG) And again they return to this famous term, which is called “drinking culture”. When Mr. Gorbachev introduced an absolutely ill-considered and harmful prohibition law, which, among other things, caused the collapse of our country, in the Union Ministry of Health we had a department head at the medical center, who spoke with this thesis of “drinking culture” in the party newspaper. He was fired from his job.
– And I met the first secretary of the regional committee of the party, who said: if he doesn’t drink, he’s either sick or a scoundrel.
– God be with them, they have already rested in God. That is not what we are talking about. We need a healthy nation. We must calmly and consistently combat alcohol abuse, and this limit on the age for selling alcohol will be a significant contribution to the task set by the president: to increase the average life expectancy of Russians to 80 years in the coming years. It is impossible to solve this without ridding the nation of addiction.
– Gennady Grigorievich, recently they discovered substitutes under the guise of cognac…
– …how we avoid damage to the health of those who might use this substitute.
Rospotrebnadzor is obliged to monitor the situation in this area. And that is what it does. Unfortunately, not all counterfeiters can be caught with one hand; they, to our regret, are very inventive and cunning.
– By the way, September 15 is the birthday of Rospotrebnadzor, an organization that is directly related to the problem raised, because it is obliged to control the quality of consumption, including alcoholic products.
– Sanitary supervision is a very important part of the general system of struggle for public health; it is no coincidence that its history began long before the date we celebrate. On September 15, 1922, Sannadzor was founded in the young Soviet Republic. And specialists in this area have been known since biblical times. In the Russian Empire, sanitary doctors served in the Tsarist army, on the railway and in many provinces.
Therefore, I take this opportunity to congratulate my colleagues for choosing this noble profession as their life’s work, for working in this service. And every year the importance of their activities not only does not decrease, but also increases. Therefore, I wish them success, good luck, I wish them greater activity in the enormous work that is formulated today in the President’s speech: to improve the health of the people, where they are one of the main instruments. There is everything for this. There is a legislative base, there are legal instruments.
– I can’t help but join in. Thank you very much, Gennady Grigorievich.
