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Research published in F1000Research, discusses the public health issues arising from the unregulated trade of alcohol. One of the authors, Dirk Lachenmeier, explains the potential harm to underage drinkers; the hazards due to toxic ingredients such as methanol; and the potential harm of increased drinking volumes due to low prices and high availability on the internet.

Illegally sold, untaxed and homemade alcohol

About one third of the total alcohol consumption in the Russian Federation is unrecorded, which means that not all alcohol consumption is not officially registered by the state. Besides illegally sold and untaxed alcohol, unrecorded alcohol sources could be homemade alcohol, so-called samogon in Russia, but also includes various sources of surrogate alcohols, e.g., industrial, cosmetic or medicinal alcohol.

In our latest research, we have looked into illegally sold alcohol, more specifically counterfeited alcohol. Counterfeited alcohol is a form of food fraud. This means that the products claim to be certain branded products, but are in fact fakes.

The fakes were so well done and convincing that the consumer probably wouldn’t have been able to detect the fakes.

Protecting the consumer

The CVUA Karlsruhe is a governmental food control authority in Germany. One of our responsibilities is to protect the consumer from food fraud, and in the field of alcohol control we have conducted several studies to differentiate authentic from counterfeited spirits over the last decade.

In Germany, the problem is typically restricted to some cases of fraudulent refilling of bottles. During our current research project on unrecorded alcohol from Russia, we soon realised that the market of counterfeited spirits had partially moved to the internet, so we tried to obtain and sample products using this source. We found that, apart from some scams, it was easy to obtain such spirits. Our laboratory analyses showed that the products were indeed counterfeited. The fakes were so well done and convincing that the consumer, especially if the products are resold, probably wouldn’t have been able to detect the fakes.

Underage drinkers

Conventional trade outlets are usually extremely aware of the problem of underage drinking and will check the customer is of the legal age limit. However, this is not the case on the internet. We never had to verify our age, and this holds true not only for Russia, but also for our previous research in Germany. This means that underage drinkers can very easily obtain alcohol by internet mail order, which may lead to alcohol-related harms, especially for this most sensitive group of consumers.

Added toxic ingredients

It is important to distinguish between intentionally and non-intentionally added ingredients. Toxic compounds that may be introduced non-intentionally could be due to contamination during distillation or from contaminated water sources, such as those containing lead, or raw materials, such as stone-fruits, which may contain ethyl carbamate. Although the substance is not acutely toxic to humans, it could be carcinogenic.

Unhygienic practices and non-diligent distillation may also lead to high concentrations of acetaldehyde or ethyl acetate among other toxic and/or carcinogenetic compounds. However, these non-intentional contaminants usually do not exceed toxicological thresholds. On the other hand, we have cases were toxic substances, such as pure methanol, were intentionally added to the alcohol. Methanol above certain thresholds causes high morbidity (blindness) and mortality. A few years ago, there was a crisis in the Czech Republic, and methanol deaths still regularly occur in Russia.

Underage drinkers can very easily obtain alcohol by internet mail order trade, which may lead to alcohol related harms

Undermining policy measures

There are certain alcohol policy measures in place regarding sales prices and availability. The illegal products undermine the minimum price policies, because no taxes are paid and the products are considerably cheaper than regular alcohol products. The availability is undermined by the internet as sales outlet, which is available 24-7 and you get the products delivered very easily to your doorstep.

Steps to be taken

As far as we are aware, there is almost no literature or previous research into the problem of counterfeit sales over the internet. Basically, in the Russian Federation and most countries, laws against counterfeiting are in existence, but clearly these are difficult to enforce in the virtual anonymity of the internet.

During our research, we discovered that shops that had been closed by state measures, quickly re-appeared on slightly different web addresses. This is similar to the situation in the European Union, for example, with sales of illegal medicines or food supplements: the enforcement of the laws against counterfeiting and illegal sales is extremely challenging and potentially needs new approaches such as special task forces against internet criminality.