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Jessica Golloher reports that Russian leaders say they’re getting serious about alcohol abuse. But they’re cracking down on beer consumption… not vodka.

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MARCO WERMAN: Vyacheslav Ivankov lived more than a decade longer than the average Russian man.  That probably says something about Ivankov’s bodyguards.  But it also has to do with the fact that the average Russian man drinks too much.  Russian drinking and its effects on health are a national disaster, and if you think I’m exaggerating, listen to this: the average life expectancy of the Russian male is about 58 years.  That’s 18 years less than the average European lives.  Many health experts blame the difference on alcohol-related illnesses.  Jessica Golloher has the story from Moscow.

JESSICA GOLLOHER:  Russia has long had a drinking problem.  It’s one of the world’s largest per capita consumers of alcohol, and a study out this summer found alcohol played a part in more than half the deaths of working age Russian men since the Soviet collapse.  So President Dmitry Medvedev is taking action.  He’s introduced legislation to rein in Russian drinking.  Medvedev is right on schedule, says Andrei Kortunov of the New Eurasia Foundation, a Moscow think tank.

ANDREI KORTUNOV: This is a tradition in Russia, that practically every new leader who comes to power wants to do something in terms of fighting alcohol. Everyone understands that it is a national problem and something has to be done about that.

GOLLOHER: What the Russian president plans to do about it is put restrictions on beer sales,  for instance, barring the sale of beer in cans or bottles larger than 12 ounces.  But many here don’t think much of the plan.  Shawna Lucey is from Texas.  She’s lived in Russia for nearly five years.

SHAWNA LUCEY:  Making the cans smaller isn’t gonna make people drink less.  That is so stupid.

GOLLOHER: And beer, though popular, isn’t Russia’s drink of choice.  That would be vodka, and the government isn’t proposing limits on vodka sales.  Kortunov says he thinks the government’s anti-beer campaign is more about targeting foreign business, than addressing Russia’s drinking problem.

KORTUNOV: First of all, you know, beer is not the only drink which Russian population consumes in plenty. One of the reasons why it happens, paradoxically, is that most of the beer production is now controlled by foreign companies.

GOLLOHER: Companies like Danish brewer Carlsberg, which brews Russia’s number one beer, Baltica. The Russian government is also proposing a dramatic increase on beer excise tax in the next few years.  Kortunov says he’d like to see the government focus more on the unhealthy lifestyles of many Russians.  Until that happens, he doubts the government’s latest campaign will have a real effect.

KORTUNOV: If it’s just the first step, we can give Medvedev the benefit of the doubt, though this step is probably rather a clumsy one. But if it is all that they can offer, I think the results are not likely to be that great.

GOLLOHER: If history is any indication, Kortunov is probably right.   In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev imposed strict restrictions on public drinking, and he slashed production of wines and spirits.  That triggered a massive surge in moonshining and a dramatic drop in Gorbachev’s popularity. For The World, I’m Jessica Golloher in Moscow.

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