"There will be no repetition of the experience of the 1980s, when we fought against alcohol use with prohibitive measures," Putin said.
He said there will be no deficit of high-grade alcohol in Russia in the future, but defended the government's decision to introduce July 1, 2006 new excise regulations to ensure quality protection of alcoholic beverages.
The new regulations and a ban on Georgian and Moldovan wine were designed as part of a campaign to squeeze potentially fatal bootleg and low-quality alcohol out of the market, but technical difficulties left Russians with a slim choice of domestically produced beverages this summer.
Wines and hard liquor all but disappeared from licensed store shelves following the July 1 introduction of an automated system to create a uniform database on the production and movement of alcohol in Russia, and a ban on old excise stamps that temporarily stopped imports.
In his fifth annual Q&A broadcast since he came to power in 2000, Putin criticized the prime minister for his failure to identify and punish officials responsible for a recent crisis on Russia's alcohol market following the introduction of new excise regulations for imported liquor.
"Officials and the government - top-level officials - appeared unprepared, failed to take into account all the problems and the scale of the work that was to be done, and did not take prompt measures to bring order [to the market]," he said.
Putin said that the Russian market was dominated by counterfeit and poor-quality alcoholic beverages, which are causing serious harm to health of Russian citizens and contribute to the deterioration of the demographic situation in the country.
Alcohol poisoning cases are regularly reported in Russia. Earlier in the year, the interior minister called them a national tragedy and urged a crackdown on bootleg alcohol sales in the country, saying that about 42,000 die and many become disabled from alcohol poisoning every year.
But Georgia and Moldova said Russia's ban on wine, a major source of revenue for the two former Soviet states, was political.
