Mr. Putin ordered the government to tighten regulations on products like perfumes, cleaning solutions, personal-care items and other consumer products that were more than 25 percent alcohol, and to impose harsher penalties for violations.

Image A bottle of the deadly “body lotion” that was confiscated in Irkutsk, Russia. Credit... Russian Interior Ministry

Russian investigators have detained 13 people who are suspected of distributing the deadly liquid. It was packaged as “bath lotion” with a warning that it was not for internal consumption, but the label also said it contained 93 percent ethyl alcohol, the type found in liquor, wine and beer. In fact, it was made with methyl alcohol, which is poisonous. The investigators said they had discovered two workshops where the poisonous lotion was made.

Mr. Putin’s order also called for changes to be considered in how alcohol was taxed, “with the aim of reducing demand for fake alcohol,” according to the Kremlin’s website.

Bottles of the mislabeled lotion were sold for about $1. Prices for a standard bottle of vodka, which contain twice as much liquid but whose contents are only about 40 percent alcohol, start at more than $3.

Some lawmakers said they thought the country’s liquor industry was exploiting the deaths in Irkutsk to get relief from taxes that were imposed in part to combat alcoholism. Gennady G. Onishchenko, a member of Parliament and former chief sanitary officer for the country, told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda that “the alcohol lobby is bitterly against the anti-alcoholism concept, passed in 2009.”