The Liquor Ban in Czech Republic

Over the past week, 19 people in the Czech Republic have died after drinking cheap alcohol that was cut with methyl alcohol in the past week or so, and officials have even started exhuming bodies of people who have died in recent days to see if they also died in this way, though it seems that none yet have died because of this. 

Right now, it appears that most of the people who died got their alcohol from little dirty 24-hour kiosks that sell liquor by the shot in little plastic cups kinda like yogurt cups. But nobody is really sure, and rumors are flying all over the place because some of the people who died (and even more who went blind) have indicated that they bought perfectly "normal" alcohol, in bottles with tax stamps. Of the people who died, the vast majority have come from areas in eastern Moravia, which is generally poorer but also has a stronger tradition of making home-made brandy. But as soon as someone in Prague died, the government leaped into gear, and 19 people have been arrested (though it's still too early to say why) in connection with distribution of methylated spirits.

Yesterday, the government issued a temporary ban effective 7pm last night on the sale of all alcohol over 40 proof. Bars, restaurants, and supermarkets were all forced to remove their stock from areas where customer could get to it, and ČSA, the main Czech airline (the Lufthansa of Bohemia!) is also not allowed to give hard alcohol to its clients. I was in a pub last night (actually 2 pubs), and both had completely removed all hard alcohol from shelves. The only things that were left were a cherry liquor, "griotka," and other sweet shots of the type that you can pour over ice cream. One of the pubs had on their menus a selection of 10-year-old scotches and liquor imported from Brazil -- but they told me that they faced severe fines and possibly prison for public endangerment if they sold it. It was surreal to see the empty shelves and refrigerators.

The methyl epidemic has dominated the news here; if you look at the pages of the biggest paper in the republic, Blesk (a tabloid), "Prohibition" is their one-word headline. But other more respectable papers, such as Mladá fronta DNES and Hospodářské noviny, have also given wall-to-wall coverage of the situation, with up-to-the-minute reports and blogs dedicated to covering the most recent statements of the Ministry of Health and  a "Q and A" about "Everything you need to know about the ban," as well as reactions from bar owners and customers, most of whom are frustrated because "we get our alcohol from a wholesaler, Makro [a Czech version of Sam's Club or Costco], and so for us, the ban really doesn't make much sense."

The sheer dominance of this topic in the Czech press, however, is interesting. It seems to me that similar things, such as an E. coli epidemic, would not so dominate public discourse in the US; at the same time, the geographical proximity and the more direct channels of distribution of alcohol here may make it more noticeable. Furthermore, it touches on the issue of the Czech Republic's shady moonshine* business, which is tolerated, particularly in Moravia, because a great deal of semi-legal distilling is of home-grown apples and plums (and the homemade stuff is usually way better than what you get in the store). It also affects products that are considerably more "social" than spinach contaminated with botulism, and gives people in the pub something to talk about.

In a country like Czech Republic, however, there are still plenty of outlets for people to enjoy a drink, as long as it's beer or wine, and so perhaps it's appropriate that the main square in Brno, Náměstí svobody, (Freedom Place), has been turned into a giant pub for the week, with the "celebration of beer" in full swing. Go figure.

* shady moonshine? Editor!