Commentary Surrogate alcohol containing methanol, social deprivation and public health in Novosibirsk, Russia Maria Neufeld a,b, *, Dirk Lachenmeier b,c , Thomas Hausler c , Jürgen Rehm a,b,d,e,f ,g a Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), 33 Russell Street, Toronto, ON M5S 2S1, Canada b Institute for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, TU Dresden, Chemnitzer Street 46, 01187 Dresden, Germany c Chemisches und Veterinäruntersuchungsamt (CVUA) Karlsruhe, Weissenburger Strasse 3, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany d Campbell Family Mental Health Research Institute, CAMH, 250 College Street, Toronto, ON M5T 1R8, Canada e Institute of Medical Science (IMS), University of Toronto, Medical Sciences Building, 1 King’s College Circle, Room 2374, Toronto, ON M5S 1A8, Canada f Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, 250 College Street, 8th Floor, Toronto, ON M5T 1R8, Canada g Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, 155 College Street, 6th Floor, Toronto, ON M5T 3M7, Canada A R T I C L E I N F O Article history: Received 25 March 2016 Received in revised form 17 July 2016 Accepted 2 August 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Alcohol Russia Unrecorded alcohol Surrogate Methanol Formic acid Policy Marginalised populations A B S T R A C T Surrogate alcohol, i.e. alcohol not intended or not officially intended for human consumption, continues to play an important role in alcohol consumption in Russia, especially for people with alcohol dependence. Among the different types of surrogate alcohol, there are windshield washer antifreeze liquids; these products are the cheapest kinds of non-beverage alcohol available and thus likely to be used by the most deprived and marginalised groups such as homeless people with alcohol dependence. Although it is well known, that non-beverage alcohol is used for consumption by various groups in Russia, and although there are laws to prohibit the use of methanol as part of windshield washer antifreeze liquids for the very reason that such products could be used as surrogate alcohol, we detected products in retail sale which were a mix of water and methanol only. Methanol poses serious health threats including blindness and death, and there had been repeated methanol deaths from surrogate alcohol in Russia over the last years. If law-enforcement does not change for surrogate products, we can expect more methanol- resulting deaths in the most deprived and marginalized groups of people with alcohol dependence in Russia. In addition, ingredients with questionable safety profiles such as formic acid should also be prohibited in non-beverage alcohol products that are likely to be consumed as surrogate alcohol. ã 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. Unrecorded consumption, surrogate alcohol and Russia Unrecorded alcohol continues to be a major part of alcohol consumption in Russia (Rehm et al., 2014, 2016; World Health Organization, 2014), despite some positive signs in overall and unrecorded alcohol consumption and mortality (Grigoriev & Andreev, 2015; Khaltourina & Korotayev, 2015; Neufeld & Rehm, 2013). Surrogate alcohol, i.e. alcohol not or not officially intended for human consumption, constitutes a major proportion of unrecorded alcohol for definitions see Lachenmeier, Gmel, and Rehm (2013); for impact of surrogate alcohol on Russia see Bobrova et al. (2009) and Rehm et al. (2014). While the major cause for health burden stemming from surrogate alcohol, and from unrecorded consumption in general, still is ethanol (Rehm et al., 2014; Rehm, Kanteres, & Lachenmeier, 2010), there are exceptions (Solodun et al., 2011) and this short report gives a recent example from an ongoing study on unrecorded consumption. The Novosibirsk study on unrecorded consumption The Novosibirsk longitudinal study on unrecorded consump- tion uses a multi-methods approach to explore drinking patterns of unrecorded alcohol over time, and relevant links to alcohol- related harm in a clinical population. As part of the study, semi- structured in-depth expert interviews have been conducted with patients of two state-run inpatient narcological clinics (detoxifi- cation and rehabilitation units for people with substance use disorders) in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, followed by a complementary document analysis of their medical records. The * Corresponding author at: c/o J. Rehm, 33 Russell Street, T505, Toronto, ON M5S 2S1, Canada. E-mail address: neufeld.maria@gmail.com (M. Neufeld). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.08.001 0955-3959/ã 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V. International Journal of Drug Policy 37 (2016) 107–110 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect International Journal of Drug Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/drugpo