April and Holy Week mark the one-year lapse of the commotion that Dominicans experienced in 2021, when dozens of people died after ingesting adulterated drinksin most cases, with methanol.
The events began on Saturday, April 3, after the Good Friday holiday, and the Public Health reports at that time marked a fateful balance of some 150 people dead and more than 450 intoxicated that month, due to the adulteration of the drinks. The seriousness of the events led the Government to establish greater controls on the marketing of methanol.
There was also the dismantling of clandestine factories and arrests of people for the irregular trade and processing of methanol which, as determined then, was present in at least 70% of the samples taken in establishments, especially in colmados, of rums of recognized brands that were falsified.
Public Health went so far as to indicate that, according to laboratory tests, some of the adulterated drinks had concentrations of up to 99 percent methanol.
The effect of methanol, a lethal chemical used in the manufacture of some detergents, is felt more in the male population, with 82% of deaths. Most of them were people between 30 and 60 years old.
A year earlier, in 2020, there were also 247 deaths from the consumption of adulterated alcoholic beverages, another wave that marked its beginning after the Easter holiday.
For those cases and those of 2021, the Specialized Prosecutor for Crimes and Crimes against Health, had filed at least 14 accusations for the crime of illegal sale of alcoholic beverages that involved the arrest of some 77 people, 56 of them with coercive measures. The breakdown offered on that occasion indicated that there were 14 people in preventive detention, 27 with financial guarantees and 15 with other measures. They also closed 40 businesses for being linked to illegal activity.
To date, however, no conviction of any of those involved is known.
