Is fake alcohol a global threat?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2025
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Drinks with toxic ingredients have been linked to deaths and poisonings in Turkey, Laos and India in 2024.
Fake alcohol is unrecorded and unregulated alcohol that hasn’t been registered in official statistics for sales, production or trade. The range of unrecorded alcohol includes alcohol smuggled across borders, counterfeit alcohol and homemade brew.
This week of The Inquiry we look at how toxic and widespread fake alcohol is. What are the health risks of drinking contaminated alcohol? Bootleg alcohol is big business for criminals, are governments doing enough to combat the illicit alcohol trade?
Presenter: Charmaine Cozier
Producer: Vicky Carter Researcher: Katie Morgan Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey Technical producer: Toby James Editor: Tara McDermott
Contributors: Dr. Monica Swahn, alcohol epidemiologist and professor at the Wellstar College of Health and Human Services at Kennesaw State University in the USA, currently based in Uganda. Dr Dirk Lachenmeier, food chemist and toxicologist, director of department of plant-based foods at CVUA Karlsruhe, an official control laboratory, Germany. Piotr Stryszowski, senior economist at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and head of the Working Party on Countering Illicit Trade (WP-CIT), France. Jeff Hardy, Director General of Transnational Alliance to Combat Illicit Trade, USA.
Transcript
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| 0:32.1 | Welcome to The Inquiry. |
| 0:33.8 | I'm Charmaine Kosier. |
| 0:34.8 | Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:44.1 | December 2024. Officials in Turkey end the year with a chilling announcement. |
| 0:51.8 | In the past six weeks, 37 people have died across the country's largest city |
| 0:57.0 | Istanbul after drinking bootleg alcohol. 17 others also received hospital treatment for poisoning |
| 1:04.8 | from toxic liquor. A few weeks before, around 7,000 kilometres away in Laos, |
| 1:11.6 | A sixth foreign tourist dies from drinking suspected poisoned alcohol in Laos in Southeast Asia. |
| 1:17.7 | Six foreign tourists died after drinking what was suspected to be contaminated alcoholic drinks. |
| 1:25.4 | Before that in June, at least 56 deaths linked to locally brewed spirits reported in the |
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