When a renowned Iranian artist hosted friends at his apartment in Tehran last month, he served, as he did often, a bottle of homemade aragh, a traditional Iranian vodka distilled from raisins, that he had secured from a trusted dealer.
His guests and his partner did not drink that evening, so he raised shot glasses to them and drank alone.
Within a few hours, the artist, Khosrow Hassanzadeh, 60, felt his vision blur. By the next morning, his sight was gone, he was delirious and short of breath. He was rushed to a hospital, where doctors diagnosed him with methanol poisoning from the aragh, according to his partner, Shahrzad Afrashteh.
Mr. Hassanzadeh fell into a coma that night and died two weeks later, on July 2. His death, from something as innocuous as having drinks with friends, shocked and infuriated many Iranians who have found ways around the Islamic Republic’s longstanding ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol, which is punishable by a penalty of up to 80 lashes and fines.
Rather than stopping drinking, the ban over time has led to a flourishing and dangerous bootleg market. In the past three months, a wave of alcohol poisonings has spread across Iranian towns big and small, with an average of about 10 cases per day of hospitalizations and deaths, according to official tallies in local news reports.
The culprit is methanol, found in homemade distilled alcohol and counterfeit brand bottles, apparently circulating widely, according to Iranian media reports and interviews with Iranians who drink, sell and make alcohol.
To many Iranians, the deaths are an example of how the Islamic Republic’s religious rules oppress ordinary citizens and meddle in their personal lives. » | Farnaz Fassihi and Leily Nikounazar | Friday, July 14, 2023
That prohibition isn't going too well, is it? People will have their fun. Governments are very slow to learn this. – Mark
