Scott Fleming and Dr. Gordon B. Lindsay, Department of Health Science
The devastating effects of alcohol in the Russian federation have been well studied and are now widely accepted as being one of the leading causes of the nation’s mortality rate. An important study for The Russian Federation would be to quantify the density of alcohol street sales and street based alcohol advertising. This aspect of the alcoholic problem in Russia has been grossly overlooked. Quantifying the street price of cheep alcohol drinks relative to other beverages would also be useful for Russian public health affairs. This pilot study sought to gather such information.
Little has been done to ascertain the frequency of the street alcohol vendors or the effect that these outdoor “take away” sales have on total consumption of alcohol and public alcohol behavior. The purpose of the study was to obtain data on this topic that no researcher has ever attempted to collect and supply pilot information so that the methodology could be tested. The data was collected at select locations in the Russian Federation. These sites were located in three cities; Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tver.
In each city several sites of one kilometer stretches of street where selected for data collection. These one kilometer stretches were specifically chosen as sites that would most likely provide high frequencies of alcohol retailers and alcoholic advertisements. Persons collecting data were trained how to categorize the information. All alcohol retailers, whether they be “on location sales” (alcohol that is intended to be ingested on location, such as a bar or restaurant.) or “take away sales” (alcohol that is purchased to be ingested off the premises of sale) were counted and separated by category. These categories included; restaurants, bars, grocery stores and kiosks (street venders). Information specific to the retailer was then retrieved. This included the hours of sale, the price of the least expensive alcoholic beverage and the price of the least expensive non-alcoholic beverage. All of the alcoholic advertisements were also counted and categorized. They were separated by the type of alcoholic beverage they were advertising and the size of the advertisement itself. The sizes included billboards, large ads, poster ads, and small ads.
The findings were able to show us the overall density of retailers that sell alcohol and frequency of alcoholic advertisements. These were the data that were originally sought but two other important findings were discovered after analysis. 44% of the alcohol retailers were kiosks which primarily sell beer. Almost all of the advertising for alcoholic drinks, a little over 95%, was for beer. This meant that on average, any pedestrian walking down these streets would see an advertisement for beer every 30 meters and a place to buy beer every 154 meters, without ever having to leave the street.
There are traditionally two types of alcoholic retailers, on premise and off premise. The difference between these two types was previously explained. While collecting the data for this study it was discovered that street retailers were unlike that of the previous two retailers. These street kiosks are large booths that have windows displaying the products that are sold. They are typically placed on corners, bus stops and intersections. The buyer will communicate with the retail worker inside the kiosk by speaking into a small window, 30cm x 30cm, which is approximately one meter from the ground. The person selling the alcohol and tobacco products is unable to see who in purchasing the product because of the partition between them. This type of alcohol sale is so different from the other two because no face to face contact is needed to purchase the drink. This makes it imposable to enforce any regulation on who is buying alcohol. Any underage teenager can purchase as much as they want at any time of the day. This is a safe assumption to make since more than one third of the retailers found in our data were of this street partitioned type and over half were open 24 hours a day.
Since it is well documented that availability, price and marketing play large roles in the consumption of alcohol, it appears that a high density of street vendors and advertisements might be accentuating the amount of alcohol consumed, especially among adolescence. Off premise partitioned retailers provide an easy way for minors to obtain alcohol. Only with more in depth research of this nature, can we recommend specific regulations that will have greater impact in curbing alcoholism in the former Soviet Union. More research should also be done to determine if the factors studied in this project are establishing beer as a gate way drug for youth into hard liquor and alcoholic adult lifestyle.
As the data collection processes began, problems were encountered with the methods. This was to be expected since this pilot study gathers information that has never been collected in Russia before. Originally, the parameters of the data collection called for a linear kilometer on the street. This was impractical because most roads have turns and the areas of dense foot traffic often occur on corners. To accommodate for this, the method of collection was changed to include streets with turns yet still equal to one kilometer in distance. Time also became an issue. For this type of data it is better to have a large sample size of locations measured. This would lead to more compelling data. Ten locations were chosen for this study, which was one more location than the initial goal but in order to provide a persuasive argument for anti-alcohol legislation, more data must be collected. All other complications were minute in nature.
The intention of the study was to publish a paper in order to share the results of our findings and create discussion about the problems of street alcohol. We also desire to present our findings at the American Public Health Association Seminar or at the very least present a poster. The long term goal of this study is to provide more knowledge about the causes of alcoholism in the Russian Federation so proper legislation can have a greater influence to curb the problem.