Poland

This study sought to gain insights into attitudes toward alcohol and the level of alcohol knowledge that people have in Poland to provide an initial benchmark of alcohol knowledge and attitudes to inform managerial decisions in the area of public health management and education. A stratified convenience sample was employed with surveys collected both face to face and online. A sample of 417 respondents was obtained. Independent t-tests and ANOVA were used to understand whether attitudes and knowledge differed according to key demographic variables. The results of this study suggest that young and old people and people with an elementary education have the lowest levels of knowledge relating to alcohol. New public health management and education strategies are called for to reverse rising per capita consumption in Poland. Public health management efforts should focus on people with an elementary education.

This paper adresses the paradox that, just at the time when the concept of totalitarianism had fallen out of favor among western scholars, dissidents in the Soviet bloc started to use it widely in their writings. Analyzing the ways in which Adam Michnik used the concept in debates with the Western Left, the thesis of the paper is that the concept's decline in the West and its rise in the East were related phenomena.

""Published by the Hera Trust 2003

Blurb from back cover:
In this study a British anthropologist explores the part played by women in the Polish underground movement during the 1980s. The analysis shows how the capacity of Polish society to change the political system depended on a socially-valued and cohesive private domain revolving around women in the domestic sphere.

This effect, which is traced back historically to the unique configuration of circumstances prevailing in Poland over the last two centuries, suggests that processes of political continuity and change may have far deeper roots than is recognised in conventional political theory. In turn this leads to broader issues about the relations between the public and domestic arenas, and raises the question of whether a more highly-valued private realm might not have relevance today for British society.

All who are interested in gender relations, political systems, and the nature of the links between the two will find much food for thought in this book, which throws new light on one of the most significant transformations to have occurred in recent European history.""

Binge drinking among young people has become one of the most pressing social problems throughout developed economies. The discussion of its negative consequences has not moved far beyond quantitative research using the factors identified by Wechsler et al. (1994). The purpose of this paper was to investigate students’ perception of negative consequences of binge drinking using consumer collages. Our findings indicated that young people’s perceptions of various negative consequences of binge drinking were much more complex and ambiguous than it was portrayed in earlier studies.

Artykuł ma na celu wyjaśnienie motywów powstania czasopisma a także określenie przyczyny, dla której „pogranicze” powinno być ważną kategorią badawczą nauki o polityce. Autorzy wyjaśniają, jakie jest ich rozumienie pogranicza - miejsca, którego istnienie konstytuuje granica. Globalne zmiany polityczne, społeczne, ekonomiczne i kulturowe, zachodzące w ostatnich dekadach, każą rozszerzyć terytorialne definiowanie pogranicza z miejsc leżących w pobliżu granicy państwowej, na miejsca leżące w pobliżu szerzej rozumianych granic. Zmieniają się bowiem funkcje granic, a dynamika ich zmian jest na tyle duża, że pogranicza pozostają trwałymi konstruktami kulturowymi, nawet na terytoriach obecnie jednorodnych etnicznie/narodowo. W dalszej części artykułu autorzy wyjaśniają szerzej te obserwacje, a także pokrótce zdają sprawę ze specyfiki Śląska Opolskiego i cech, które konstytuują go jako region pogranicza.

Background:  The research aimed to study the quality of cheap alcohol products in Poland. These included unrecorded alcohols (i.e., home-produced or illegally imported), estimated to constitute more than 25% of total consumption and fruit wines.Methods:  A sample of alcohol products (n = 52) was collected from local markets and chemical analyses were conducted. The parameters studied were alcoholic strength, volatiles (methanol, acetaldehyde, and higher alcohols), ethyl carbamate, inorganic elements, and food additives including preservatives, colors, and sweeteners. The compositions of the beverages were then toxicologically evaluated using international standards.Results:  With the exception of 1 fortified wine, the unrecorded alcohols were home-produced fruit-derived spirits (moonshine) and spirits imported from other countries. We did not detect any nonbeverage surrogate alcohol. The unrecorded spirits contained, on average, 45% vol of alcohol. However, some products with considerably higher alcoholic strengths were found (up to 85% vol) with no labeling of the content on the bottles. These products may cause more pronounced detrimental health effects (e.g., liver cirrhosis, injuries, some forms of malignant neoplasms, alcohol use disorders, and cardiovascular disease) than will commercial beverages, especially as the consumer may be unaware of the alcohol content consumed. Fruit wines containing between 9.5 and 12.2% vol alcohol showed problems in terms of their additive content and their labeling (e.g., sulfites, sorbic acid, saccharin, and artificial colors) and should be subjected to stricter control.Regarding the other components investigated, the suspected human carcinogens, acetaldehyde and ethyl carbamate, were found at levels relevant to public health concerns. While acetaldehyde is a typical constituent of fermented beverages, ethyl carbamate was found only in home-produced unrecorded alcohols derived from stone fruits with levels significantly above international guidelines.Conclusions:  The contamination of unrecorded alcohols with ethyl carbamate should be analyzed in a larger sample that also should include legal alcoholic beverages. Furthermore, the impacts of unrecorded alcohol on the health of people with lower socioeconomic status should be studied in detail. Overall, given the extent of the alcohol-attributable disease burden in Poland, the highest priority should be given to the problem of ethanol and its very high content in unrecorded alcohol products.