ABSTRACT
This chapter explores two other twentieth-century efforts to prohibit or sharply reduce alcohol consumption: the first in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and the second in Sri Lanka in the early twentieth century. By the 1980s, alcohol's social harms exerted a large toll on the USSR. Alcohol consumption was responsible for a 10-20 percent reduction in industrial productivity and it was now suggested that more than 75 percent of murders were said to be committed by intoxicated offenders. In the late spring of 1985, just two months after becoming general secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev began a landmark campaign to significantly reduce alcohol consumption in the Soviet Union. One of the case study in this chapter focuses on efforts to adopt prohibition-like policies in Sri Lanka in the early twentieth century. The majority of Sri Lankans are adherents of Buddhisma religion in which the consumption of intoxicating substances is seen as an impediment to enlightenment.
