Interesting view about the dangers of social interventionism. Prohibition was such a huge success in the 1920’s, after all.
Solzhenitsyn laid the blame for Russian alcoholism at the feet of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Prior to his reign, Russians drank only wine or beer, but Ivan discovered the technology of distillation from the Swedes, saw a tremendous opportunity in a state monopoly on the production of vodka, and the rest was history.
Ivan grew rich from vodka revenues & created an important social safety valve that was as effective in maintaining control over the Russian people as his dreaded secret police.
Quite a theory, you might say.