ng enough
period to have become addicted, but more than one-half of the inebriated
persons brought to sobering-up facilities in Sofia hospitals and clinics
were young people.

Authorities blame advertising of alcoholic beverages, imitation of
Western fashions, disillusionment, and monotony in daily living for most
of the increase in youthful drinking. They also blame lax parental
control, but the surveys concluded that the influence of contemporary
social habits and the pressures of peer groups were forces more
powerful than those exerted by the family.

Measures have been undertaken to reduce the so-called parasitic element
that according to party and governmental spokesmen, is composed of those
who neither study nor work. As early as 1968 the minister of national
education was given six months to organize a nationwide program to cope
with the problem, and the Center for Amateur Scientific and Technical
Activities among Youth and Children was created to coordinate planning.
The Committee for Youth and Sports, the State Committee on Scientific
and Technical Progress (renamed the State Committee for Science,
Technical Progress, and Higher Education), the Komsomol, and the trade
unions were charged with contributing ideas and assistance. As a result
of the center's activities, the next year each _okrug_ was directed to
organize schools with three-month-long vocational training courses and
to canvass its area for young people who required the instruction.
Enterprises in the _okrug_ were directed to cooperate by indicating the
skills they most needed, by furnishing facilities and, finally, by
hiring those who completed the training.

As of 1972 the program had achieved spotty or inconclusive results. Most
spokesmen considered it as satisfactory as could have been expected.
They did not consider that it reflected badly on the effort when a few
groups reported that about 30 percent of the students who completed
their classes never reported to the jobs for which they had been
prepared and that others stayed at work for only a short time. Other
observers consider that the authorities are concerned over a problem
much of which does not exist or that is blown out of proportion to its
seriousness. For example, 85 percent of the offending group were girls
or young women. A few of them were undoubtedly ideological malcontents,
members of youth gangs, prostitutes, or criminals, but a large majority
considered themselves living ino