Roll Out the Bottle

Nowhere in Central Europe's vodka belt is there a harder-drinking nation than Poland, where doctors estimate that 1,500,000 of the country's 31 million people drink too much. Last year Poles managed to down 118 million quarts of vodka, wine and beer, or almost four quarts for every man, woman and child, a statistic that shows up in widespread worker absenteeism and hooliganism. Fed up, Poland's Red rulers have begun to crack down hard on alcohol, revoking 82 liquor licenses in Warsaw alone, which on top of a recent ban on liquor sales in many stores and outdoor kiosks has cut the number of Poland's booze vendors by 10%.

Out of Faucets. Once a nation of social drinkers, Poles now imbibe under any conditions and at the least excuse. Things have reached the point where drunks are generally taken to sobering-up stations, not to jail. Government inspectors, curious at the number of empty inkwells on office desks, have found that they are commonly used as vodka glasses, and one official stepped into a washroom to discover vodka coming out of the faucets. In a tiny village near Kielce, residents recently celebrated a local store's purchase of a new padlock by guzzling 141 quarts of vodka in one night. It hardly helps that minor Polish officials wink at the nation's drunks. When a man checked in at a Poznan sobering-up station for the 40th time not long ago, the $250 debt that he owed the state for previous nights in the cooler was wiped off the books to honor his record performance.

To Poland's red-faced commissars, the country's drinking problem is no laughing matter. Radio Warsaw commented that in the province of Zielona Gora, workers lost 130,000 man-hours in a recent three-month period because of absenteeism, much of it "from the abuse of alcohol." Teen-age rowdyism is even more worrisome. One newspaper said 80% of Polish hooliganism could be traced to alcohol, while a Gdansk poll turned up even more remarkable statistics: among 5,000 youngsters aged 7 to 14, as many as 42% drank occasionally and 20% frequently.

Off to the Stadium. If the latest crackdown follows form, it will not leave the slightest dent in alcoholism. An 18% price increase in vodka last November and the gradual introduction of wine and beer have had no effect on consumption of stronger stuff. Instead, said one journalist, beer is now "considered a supplement to the normal vodka ration." Other measures to cut down drinking have proved just as hopeless. One town used its "corkage" taxes from vodka sales to build a sports stadium, apparently thinking the lure of sports would take people's minds off liquor. The populace flocked eagerly to the games, all right--with a bottle of booze in almost every pocket.

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