Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has urged his government to ban energy drinks.
"The use of any intoxicating drugs is unacceptable in a Muslim society," he said during a parliamentary meeting Tuesday, according to a statement posted on the Chechen government's official website.
Calling energy drinks "poison," Kadyrov ordered his government to prepare legislation banning their sale in the North Caucasus republic.
Kadyrov also called for a society-wide awareness campaign to limit the drinks' circulation and inform young people of the dangers of consuming them.
Among potential dangers for consumers of the drinks, Kadyrov listed mental health problems, depression and aggression, citing reports of one death and 530 hospital admissions in 2012 due to poisoning from consumption of such drinks.
"We need healthy and strong young people. For this we must fight by all means possible," he said, according to the statement.
Kadyrov said the ban should spread across the whole of Russia, echoing a similar view expressed by Gennady Onishchenko, Russia's chief sanitary doctor.
"Without any false modesty, I can call myself the initiator of the idea for an immediate and complete ban on this new phenomenon," Onishchenko said last week.
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