Smuggled Alcohol Causes Adverse Health Risk In Latin-American Countries

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With the increasing case of alcohol smuggling in South America, it continues to pose as a serious threat to the health of Latinos.

According to the recent study conducted by Euromonitor International, Peru holds the record as the country with the highest percentage of homemade alcohol consumption across Latin America at 30.8 percent.

According to the research, one of every four bottles of alcohol in South America is illegal. This is surely a scary discovery that would put many people's health in serious danger. 

In an earlier report by Daily Mail, consumption of illegal or fake alcohol may result to blindness or even death. Partygoers in Europe have been warned about smuggled alcohol intake that have already reported many cases of poisoning.

The study was conducted in six Latin American countries such as Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, El Salvador, Colombia and Honduras. The journal, which is entitled "Illegal liquor market in 6 countries" stated that the study started in 2012. It shows a graph of how much each country lost when it comes to their economy because of the illegal alcohol market. Ecuador ranked second on the list of countries with the highest illegal alcohol consumptions at 28.6 percent. El Salvador is third with 23.5 percent.

According to Latin Correspondent, during an interview with Lourdes Chavarria, one of the lead researchers of Euromonitor, she stated that this situation will cause health problems across the all countries involved in the study.

"Craft drinks are made with no control, there is no care in the materials used and when they distill it they do not control the alcohol levels of the final product. Then it becomes a risk to consumer health," she said.

According to a report by National Society of Industries, illegal alcohol has already caused two thousand deaths in the year 2009 in Peru. The Peruvian government also claimed that three percent of their national health budget goes to the treatment and prevention of different diseases caused by illegal alcohol intake, the news portal reported.

Meanwhile, the illegal alcohol trade does not only pose a serious danger in the health of the people who consume them, it has also taken a significant chunk of the economy from the countries involved in the survey.

There has already been an agency created that will focus on how they can stop or control the illegal alcohol trade. They called it, The Commission to Combat Piracy and Customs Crimes. This goes to show that the authorities are doing something about the situation.