In Iran, 84 people have died and nearly a thousand are in serious condition due to a severe poisoning produced by smuggled alcohol. The authorities speak of a real emergency that is involving four provinces of the Islamic country, where the sale and consumption of alcohol are prohibited, with 305 people who have been hospitalized in the last days with kidney damage and 27 in the eyes, after drinking the poisoned alcohol. Most cases of poisoning have been reported in the province of Alborz (north) and Hormozgan (south). At the end of September, several cases of poisoned alcohol smuggling were reported across the country, killing at least 27 people. Despite the ban, and the heavy penalties imposed by the Islamic revolution of the 1979 ranging from fines to the whipping for those discovered to drink alcohol, in Iran, according to a study last February, there are 5 million alcoholics. There is a large supply of alcohol on the black market but at very high prices, while at reasonable prices you can buy alcoholic beverages produced in houses that are sometimes adulterated in order to cause serious poisonings. Only members of religious minorities recognized by the state have the right to produce or buy alcoholic beverages in Iran. In Asia, the production of handcrafted contraband liquor is widespread and every year hundreds of people die from methanol poisoning. In the most serious case, highlights Giovanni D'Agata, president of the "Rights Window", In the Indian state of West Bengal in the 2011, 48 people died within 143 hours. The number of the dead arrived in the following days up to 170. Methanol is used as an economic substitute for alcohol in many third world countries, but often ends up in smuggled liquors from developed countries and in recent years there have been cases of mass poisoning in Russia, Norway, Estonia and the Czech Republic. In 1986, in Italy, 23 people died due to a consignment of wine altered with methanol.
