the oil being spoken of is olive oil, a super luxury item. As food prices go up, some things will remain cheap. Think about how in Russia food was super expensive yet Vodka was super cheap. I believe i have posted an article about that at PPF. about helping to control the populace by keeping things like alcohol cheap so they cn drown their sorrows in.
Drink your way out of Recession
No bailout - Russians get cheaper vodka instead. Government to cut alcohol taxes in half to help ease the citizens pain.
Amid a financial crisis that is cutting jobs and eroding growth, there is finally good news for Russians.
The head of the new state alcohol agency - gleefully dubbed the "ministry for vodka" by the press - was advocating cutting taxes on the national tipple to make it more accessible, the Izvestia daily reported.
Igor Chuiyan, the former head of state alcohol monopoly Rosspirtprom, has been named to head the new federal agency for alcohol market regulation, or Rosalkogol for short.
Without citing its sources, the paper said he advocated slashing the tax on a litre of pure alcohol from 190.8 roubles (R59.55) now to 100 roubles.
This would mean that the tax on 500ml of vodka would be cut to about 20 roubles from the current 38 roubles, it said.
Such a move would be part of Rosalkogol's mission to crack down on the serious problem of the selling of contraband alcohol, which means, according to Izvestia, that one out of every three bottles of vodka sold in Russia is fake.
The sale of fake alcohol not only has serious economic consequences for producers but also for health: dozens of Russians die each year by drinking adulterated vodka.
Izvestia said Chuiyan could impose a minimum price of about 100 roubles for vodka this year, to stop Russians buying dangerously cheap spirits.
According to some reports, Russians have also been cutting down their purchases of vodka during the economic crisis and resorting to homemade spirits, known as samagon.
In more general terms, the World Health Organisation warned earlier this week that the crisis might spark a rise in mental illness and health problems as people turned to alcohol, tobacco and drugs to get through the downturn.
"This has happened in the past," said Margaret Chan, the UN agency's director-general, at a conference on the effects on health of the financial crisis.
In the UK, where banks are feeling the full force of the crisis, this could exacerbate a worrying trend. A government survey noted yesterday that a third of Britons regularly exceeded recommended limits for alcohol consumption, with men and managers leading the way.
About 41 percent of men consumed more than four units of alcohol, the equivalent of two pints of beer, at least once a week, said the UK Office for National Statistics. One in three women exceeded the recommended level of two to three units, or two glasses of wine.
At the conference, Chan also warned that periods of economic instability "increase the risk that people will neglect healthcare, with prevention falling by the wayside".
She noted that public health systems, which were already "overstretched and underfunded", could take further strain. "In times of economic crisis, people tend to forgo private care and make more use of publicly financed services."
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=565&fArticleId=4805700
