Soviets Soften Anti-Liquor Drive
The government has relaxed curbs on the production of alcohol and lifted some restrictions on the sale of booze in a slackening of Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s anti-drunkenness drive, a weekly newspaper reported.
Moscow News, which is at the forefront of the Soviet leader’s campaign for glasnost , or openness, did not say what restrictions on sales were removed.
But the labor newspaper Trud reported last month that Moscow city authorities had recently allowed an expansion of the number of stores selling alcoholic beverages to 772. It did not give the previous figure.
Moscow News, in its Wednesday editions, and Trud gave two reasons for the easing of Gorbachev’s anti-alcoholism campaign: to try to discourage moonshining and to stop a run on sugar. The moonshiners, who Trud said are outproducing the legal alcohol industry, use sugar to make alcohol.
Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign, his first major initiative after taking power in March, 1985, included raising the drinking age, shortening the hours of liquor stores and cutting liquor production.
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