Moscow to ban vodka sales after 10pm
From the beginning of September, it will be illegal for the Russian capital’s supermarkets, shops and kiosks to sell vodka from 10pm to 10am.The move will replace lax rules that theoretically forbid Moscow’s shops from selling the grain-based spirit from eleven at night to eight in the morning but which in practice allow them to sell vodka around the clock if they get a permit.
It comes as the Kremlin pushes ahead with the harshest anti-alcohol campaign since former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s draconian ban on vodka sales in 1985.
Mr Gorbachev, who became a hate figure for many ordinary Russians as a result of the ban, decreed that vodka could only be sold from two in the afternoon to seven at night.
His campaign prompted desperate drunks to rush to get their fix by imbibing perfume and other hazardous intoxicants instead.
Many of them died as a result.
