HEALTH-JAPAN: Enforcing Ban on Outdoor Smoking Far from Easy

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 27 2002 (IPS) - In the key municipality of Chiyoda in the Japanese capital, a small army of officers and security guards carefully patrol the streets from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., three times a week.

The army of some 40 people are on the lookout for people who are taking a puff standing at street corners, while walking or milling about around crowded train stations in the Chiyoda ward, home to many of Japan’s top banks and government offices.

Because Chiyoda’s population swells to 800,000 during the day with the entry of workers from other towns, its officials face no small task in educating and warning people about an October ordinance that bars smoking in eight designated streets and outdoor areas – as well as discarding cigarette butts there.

But so far, officials and activists say, the ordinance – which took effect Oct. 1 and makes Japan the first country to pass a local rule curtailing outdoor smoking – is making a difference.

”We hope Chiyoda ward’s example will spread across the nation,” says Bungoku Watanabe of Japan Action on Smoking and Health, one of the country’s oldest activist groups.

Kunihiko Tsukada, an official at Chiyoda ward whose job it is to monitor the programme, says he interprets the decline in collections of cigarette butts in the area as a ”drop in the number of smokers”.

Tsukada reports that last week, the number of cigarette butts collected dropped to 108 from 250 at the end of September, a figure that he says shows how limiting smoking areas does work for the public good.

”Protests from people against smokers in the streets led us to pass the ordinance,” he explains, adding that having huge crowds of people rushing about in the financial area – many of them smokers – had often led to mishaps.

”After several accidents when young children were burnt or people’s clothes were burnt by cigarettes, we decided to take the drastic step,” he adds.

Stopping smokers from indulging in their habit in a country where nearly half of all men smoke, however, is not easy. Some refuse to extinguish their cigarettes when accosted by patrol officers and accuse them of invading their rights, but others apologise and snuff out their cigarettes.

Soon, smokers who defy the outdoor smoking limitations face not just a slap on the wrist. Starting Nov. 1, violators will face fines of between 2,000 yen (16 U.S. dollars) to 20,000 yen (161 dollars) for lighting up in non-smoking streets.

Anti-smoking groups in Japan welcome the move as a much-needed step in their long and frustrating battle to protect the public from the harmful effects of tobacco.

In fact, Watanabe’s 70,000-strong group has advised Chiyoda ward to establish cheap spot-fines, making it easier to carry out the anti-smoking drive.

”Cheap fines make the new drive fairer and thus can garner more public support. Critics could say there are thousands of people who are smoking out there and it is unfair to penalise one or two smokers a lot of money,” he explains.

Chiyoda’s ban was intended to protect people from getting burned by cigarettes in outdoor areas and narrow streets, and in order to keep public areas clean – and not so much as an anti-smoking measure. It aims to shape better smoking manners, Tsukada says.

But anti-smoking advocates say it may well be just as effective in making inroads into Japan’s high rates of tobacco use.

According to official statistics, from a population of 127 million, Japan has 30 million smokers. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reports that Japan tops the list of cigarette-importing countries and brings in around 83.5 billion cigarettes a year.

Domestic sales of tobacco totalled 163 billion cigarettes in April to September last year. Annual sales bring in 1.9 trillion-yen (15 billion dollars).

Compared to the nearly half of Japanese males who smoke, 13.4 percent of women light up. The highest smoking rates are among Japanese in their twenties and thirties – 62 percent for men and 24 percent for women.

While these mark a drop from the 85 percent of Japanese men who smoked in 1966, Watanabe says the progress of the anti-smoking movement remains painfully slow.

”It is difficult to move forward in a country where smoking is not defined as a health hazard but more as an individual hobby,” he says, adding that the tobacco industry knows this and defines smoking as an matter of taste and thus an individual right.

Television commentators, reporting on Chiyoda’s ordinance, have been making jokes about it. ”Let’s avoid shopping or going to those areas, so we can continue smoking,” they say, much to the horror of activists.

Watanabe adds that activists are up against a society used to smoking, highlighted by the fact that the Finance Ministry holds a 50 percent stake in Japan Tobacco Inc and relies heavily on tobacco-related revenues.

Unlike countries that have banned or limited tobacco advertising, media and commuter trains in Japan continue to carry tobacco advertisements. Cigarette vending machines dot the country.

Although about 95,000 Japanese die from tobacco-related deaths annually, there are few lawsuits against tobacco companies here, unlike in the United States.

Media reports said that the Japan opposed negotiations in Geneva this month on a global treaty to control tobacco consumption.

Still, Watanabe says, the Chiyoda ordinance is a healthy sign. ”The new ordinance illustrates an emerging anti-smoking lobby. Even among smokers, there are many that say they would like to quit if they can. We have to force Japan to work to help them,” he says.

HEALTH-JAPAN: Enforcing Ban on Outdoor Smoking Far from Easy

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 27 2002 (IPS) - In the key municipality of Chiyoda in the Japanese capital, a small army of officers and security guards carefully patrol the streets from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., three times a week.
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