Methanol poisoning: how Laos horror happened

The suspected mass poisoning of six tourists in Laos last week has sent shockwaves through the backpacker scene, and highlighted Southeast Asia's problem with tainted alcohol.

A Briton, two Australians, two Danes and an American are all believed to have been poisoned by methanol – a chemical often used to increase the potency of bootleg alcohol – in the tourist town of Vang Vieng.

Southeast Asia has the "highest rates of methanol poisoning globally", said Al Jazeera, and this is often blamed on "economic pressures and weak regulations". Laos, despite its increasing popularity with backpackers, is one of the poorest nations in the region.

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What do we know so far?

The six victims had all stayed at or visited Vang Vieng's Nana Backpackers Hostel, said the BBC. The American was "found dead in his bedroom there" on the same morning that the two young Danish women "were found unconscious in their rooms and rushed to hospital", said the broadcaster's Asia correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes. The two Australians "had taken free shots" there, according to another BBC report.

It's been alleged that hostel staff had been offering shots of vodka "as a gesture of hospitality", according to Associated Press. The hostel owner denied serving illegal or homemade alcohol but eight "members of the staff and management" have since been detained over the suspected poisoning, said Australia's ABC News.

Authorities in Thailand, where the Australians, Holly Bowles and Bianca Jones, both 19, were being treated before their deaths, have confirmed that Jones died from "brain swelling due to high levels of methanol found in her system".

What is methanol poisoning?

Methanol is a type of alcohol, like ethanol – which we find in alcoholic drinks – but it's cheaper, stronger and poisonous.

Vendors often add this toxic chemical to bootlegged liquor to increase its potency. It's impossible to detect without specialist equipment because it is colourless and smells very "similar to ethanol", said Science Direct.

But, when we ingest even a small amount, our body breaks it down into toxic acids. It can, within 72 hours, cause blindness, kidney failure, liver damage, and even death.

Is this a widespread problem?

This tragedy is the "latest of several mass poisonings", said The Times. In June, about 60 people died and more than 200 were hospitalised in India. In 2018, more than 100 died in Indonesia. There have also been cases in Brazil, Peru, Turkey and Norway. The victims are often locals, "for whom poverty makes illegal alcohol appealing", but the risk to inexperienced backpackers is growing.

Over the years in Vang Vieng, people have died "after drinking from buckets of cheap booze, then launching themselves into the water from bamboo slings and ramshackle slides". Pressure from foreign ambassadors over the "growing number of deaths" led Laotian authorities to close most of the bars in 2012 – which "has sadly not helped the latest victims".

What will the impact be?

The Laotian government officially acknowledged the mass poisoning on Sunday, promising it would bring perpetrators to justice.

Some tourism industry figures say the deaths have "exposed the dangerous incentives driving the backpacker-focused tourism", said Al Jazeera. The business model of offering cheap alcohol to budget-conscious travellers "encourages unsafe cost-cutting practices".

The poisonings have had "an immediate effect" on Vang Vieng's tourism industry, a "crucial economic driver" in the region.

What else is at play here?

A "critical factor" is the "absolutely abysmal" state of Laos's healthcare system, said Damien Phillips, fellow of economics think tank The Cobden Centre, in The Spectator. Almost all the tourists fell sick just a couple of hours from the Laotine capital, Vientiane, but had to be flown or driven to Thailand, "delaying urgent treatment", because Laos has "not one decent hospital".

One of the world's last communist governments "has to shoulder most of the blame" for that. The "self-destructive economic policies" of the ruling Lao People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP) mean the country has been "stagnating for almost half a century".

But the situation is also a "damning indictment of Western development policy". Billions of dollars of foreign money and aid have gone into Laos over the past few decades, but corruption is "rife" and "millions lost in backhanders and bribes".

British policymakers should note that the LPRP's "insistence on NHS-style healthcare" has also exacerbated the problem. Laos is "looking for scapegoats", but Keir Starmer "must be clear that it was Vientiane's policies that played a critical role in the death of a British citizen" – and review how aid money is "propping up a failing regime".