Ah, well that helped me track the 50% blurb down to this article in Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60941-6/abstract

Ah, well that helped me track the 50% blurb down to this article in Lancet: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)60941-6/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... Which was a study of one town in Russia. Their interpretation of the results includes this line: "Almost half of all deaths in working age men in a typical Russian city may be accounted for by hazardous drinking." From my brief research, it looks like most articles online replaced "typical Russian city" with "Russia", which seems unfounded given the research.