RBC: the government did not support the idea of ​​​​the inscription on the bottle “Alcohol is your enemy!”

The government has prepared a negative response to the initiative of a group of deputies and senators to place the warning “Alcohol is your enemy!” on bottles of alcohol, as well as to make the inscriptions on the bottles about the dangers of alcohol more visible. The text of the recall, the authenticity of which was confirmed by two participants in the alcohol market, is available RBC.

According to the publication, the negative response to the initiative was supported by the Federal Alcohol Regulation Agency (RAR), the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Education, which sent their responses to the Ministry of Health in early November.

A bill proposing to introduce labeling for alcohol with a health warning was submitted to the State Duma in September. According to information TASS, its authors are State Duma deputies from the Liberal Democratic Party, headed by Boris Paikin. RBC reports that the project was supported by the head of the LDPR faction Leonid Slutsky and the chairman of the State Duma Committee on Labor, Social Policy and Veterans Affairs Yaroslav Nilov.

The deputies proposed using pictograms placed on a white background in a red frame to indicate on alcoholic products “information about the contraindications to the use of alcoholic products by persons under the age of 18, pregnant and lactating women, persons with diseases of the nervous system and internal organs, as well as persons vehicle operator.” The project also proposes to supplement the marking with the inscription “Alcohol is your enemy!”. Paikin told the agency that the label should take up “at least 20%” of the label area and have a “bright design.”

As reported “Izvestia” the representative of the Ministry of Health, the department supported the proposal of the deputies. “Although there is no scientific data on the effectiveness of such warning labels, the emergence of additional channels for informing citizens about the harmful effects of alcohol on the human body can have a positive impact on the dynamics of alcohol consumption,” he added.

The draft government recall indicates that the application of an inscription about the dangers of alcohol on alcoholic products is already provided for by the technical regulations of the Eurasian Economic Union “On the safety of alcoholic products” (will enter into force on January 1, 2024), RBC reports. The scope of the projected changes has already been settled, so “establishing the proposed requirements in national legislation is inappropriate,” the recall says. It also states that the explanatory note to the project lacks an analysis of the “socio-economic effects of the introduction of a new packaging design.”

Mr. Nilov told RBC that the authors of the project are “ready for compromises”, but, in his opinion, warning labeling should be effective, and not applied “for show”.

21 October Vladimir Putin declaredthat the problem of alcoholism in Russia is solvable. The high level of consumption, in his opinion, is associated with “insufficient development of social infrastructure.” By data According to official statistics of the Ministry of Health for 2021, almost 1.2 million people in Russia suffer from alcohol addiction.

Erdni Kagaltynov