APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
Prices of alcoholic beverages, especially vodka, were raised by an average of 10% to 15% in 1961, 1963, and 1969. Although such increases tend temporarily to discourage at least some of the least affluent habitual users, they mask rather than remedy the underlying causes of alcoholism—the bleakness and persistent frustrations of everyday life in Poland.
Some limited measures have been taken, however, to identify and rehabilitate chronic alcoholics. A system of overnight "sobering-up-stations" exists in most of the larger cities, and most cases of public intoxication unaccompanied by criminal behavior have tended to be treated as medical problems rather than problems of public order. This more realistic attitude towards the problem has been carried forward by the Gierek regime, whose willingness to publicize social ills as part of its search for remedies is revealing for the first time the magnitude of some of these problems. The government's Commission for the Struggle Against Alcoholism indicated in August 1972 that there were some 500,000 hard-core alcoholics, of whom 80,000 are "ripe for hospitalization" and another 400,000 require "immediate treatment." The commission criticized the inadequate number of treatment centers in the country, and called for the construction of additional "sobering-up-stations," as well as special hospitals to which alcoholics could be legally committed for treatment.
Prostitution, legal in prewar Poland, has also increased despite official claims to the contrary, and it is most prevalent newly developed industrial centers and seacoast towns and resorts. Postwar laws against prostitution, together with poor economic conditions in some cases, have led to increasing numbers of part-time prostitutes, i.e., those who use prostitution to supplement regular income. There is some evidence that a number of full-time, relatively affluent prostitutes are employed by the government in seaports and major tourist centers as a means of obtaining hard currencies, and for intelligence purposes.
Although data on the abuse of narcotics and drug addiction are not available, it is not believed to be sufficiently widespread to constitute a social problem by the standards of some Western countries where the problem has so rapidly grown during the past decade. By Polish standards, however—drug addiction was virtually unknown before the mid-1960's—the problem apparently is serious enough to warrant an ever increasing propaganda campaign in the public media, prosecution of juvenile and adult gangs of suppliers, and appeals for understanding by the public that the problem is medical and social rather than moral.
Apart from an apparently small quantity of processed narcotics and drugs smuggled into the country—mainly by foreign seamen along the Baltic coast—most of the supply appears to be of domestic origin, i.e., diverted from legal pharmaceutical production. In 1968, Polish officials claimed that there were only "several hundred" addicts, mainly adults who had become addicted through treatment of chronic disease with painkilling drugs. At that time, morphine was said to be the most frequently abused drug, since it is produced in Poland from domestically grown poppies. Since then, however, especially since 1970, publicity on the problem has made it increasingly clear that the number of addicts has grown into the thousands, that most of them are juveniles or young adults, that most of them began the habit on their own and not as a result of medical treatment, and that the variety of abused drugs has proliferated. Although legislation controlling the manufacture, distribution, and retail sale of not only drugs but also their chemical components calls for severe penalties, charges have been made that implementation of the law is far too lax in practice.
F. Health
1. Health conditions and medical care (C)
Much of the impetus for the rapid postwar recovery and physical reconstruction of Poland came from the government's realization of the debilitating effects of World War II devastation on the health of the people and on public health facilities. Hospitals have been rebuilt and new ones added, although modernization of facilities is not keeping pace with their expansion. A rapidly expanding program of training physicians and medical assistants has resulted in an improved doctor-to-patient ratio, but the persistent geographical maldistribution of physicians tends to hamper medical services in rural parts of the country. The general level of medical care and hygiene, however, is vastly better than during the pre-World War II period, and health conditions have approached the high level of those in East Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Despite rapid strides in preventative health measures and a more equitable distribution of medical care, congested urban living conditions and still inadequate sanitary facilities in most rural and in some urban areas result in a relatively high incidence of communicable diseases. The most prevalent of these include enteric infections, tuberculosis, venereal diseases, infectious hepatitis; and helminthiasis. Despite a program to eradicate poliomyelitis in the
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APPROVED FOR RELEASE: 2009/06/16: CIA-RDP01-00707R000200070023-3
