According to the Iranian news agency, at least twenty-six people have died and hundreds of others hospitalized after consuming alcohol contaminated with methanol.
As the level of tension in the Middle East reaches new heights, IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, announced the death of at least twenty-six people after consuming alcoholic beverages containing toxic methanol. This series of deaths, which occurred in recent days, affected women and men from several towns and villages in the provinces of Mazandaran and Gilan, in the north of the country, and Hamadan, in the west.
This collective intoxication also led to the hospitalization of several hundred people, again according to the Iranian press agency. At this stage, the origin of alcoholic beverages has not been identified even if the phenomenon is nothing new and even tends to become commonplace.
More than 700 deaths in 2020
In a country where alcohol consumption has been banned since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, many Iranians buy alcoholic drinks manufactured or imported by smugglers and available on black markets. Only members of religious minorities recognized by the state are not affected by the alcohol ban.
Others prefer to make it at home for their personal consumption, which contributes to the explosion in cases of poisoning. In 2020, more than 700 people died after consuming toxic alcohol in Iran. Especially since even if alcohol is prohibited by the regime, the Islamic Republic is home to several dozen factories in which alcohol-based pharmaceutical and cleaning products are manufactured.
