| Summary: | Introduction
After over a two-year public debate in mass media, Internet, NGOs, government agencies and legislative bodies, the Polish Parliament amended on 22 July 2016 the Tobacco Control Law to harmonize its provisions to requirements of the European Union Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) of 3 April 2014. The new law came into force on Poland on 8 September 2016. Our objective was to evaluate the attitudes of Polish Internet users toward the above legislative acts.
Material and Methods
The study analysis was based on comments of 546 Internet users who expressed their relationship to the legislative acts on websites of the most popular Polish newspapers, TV and radio stations, Internet portals and blogs between July 2015 and September 2016. Using advanced software for combined qualitative and quantitative anlaysis (Atlas.ti 7.0), attitudes of supporters and opponents of the acts were compared in two categories: 1/ types of arguments and 2/ semantic relations between arguments.
Results
Study results show that the laws opponents had more comments (336) than its supporters (210) and their arguments were stronger and more detailed. Opponents dominated with political, economic and legal arguments. All comments on tobacco products features have been exclusively made by the law opponents. Supporters of the laws overbalanced only with socio-cultural arguments. Mapping of semantic relations between arguments indicates that pattern of such relations among the laws opponents is complex and their arguments are more specific, pragmatic, referred to particular risks and expressed in emotional way. The laws supporters tend to express their arguments in clear, simple and calm way and more often protect basic, mutual and pro-social values.
Conclusions
Qualitative analysis of attitudes toward tobacco control policy is a key for in-depth understanding why people oppose or are in favor of tobacco control policy and its results can help in effective enforcement of the new tobacco control law in Poland.
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