HEALTH-JAPAN: Anti-Tobacco Drive Clouds Smokers’ Paradise

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Aug 23 1999 (IPS) - Japan, often called a smokers’ paradise, is in a tough spot as it struggles to respond to the latest anti- smoking campaign by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

This campaign, being discussed at the WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, involves work on an international treaty aimed at controlling tobacco and reducing the number of smokers around the world.

The new framework, to target all nations by 2003, aims to control use of tobacco and nicotine that leads to 4 million deaths a year, according to WHO. WHO officials hope to have a protocol utlined by October.

The convention will confirm the significant dangers to health caused by tobacco. It will seek to have countries use part of revenues from cigarette taxes to cover expenses for tobacco control, supporting tobacco farmers so they can switch to other crops, and controlling tobacco advertising.

But “Japan will probably be the last country in the world to sign to the anti-smoking convention,” says Bungaku Watanabe, head of the Tobacco Problems Information Centre in Tokyo.

That is because although the Japanese government says it wants to cut down on its number of smokers — half of adult men in this country of 127 million people smoke — the government also controls the tobacco industry and profits heavily from it.

Watanabe says the WHO requirements are particularly difficult for Japan because it is the only industrialised country where the tobacco industry is virtually owned by the state.

“Seventy percent of Japan Tobacco Inc is owned by the Finance Ministry. There is a lot of resistance to any moves that will reduce the tobacco industry,” he explains.

Japan Tobacco is a privatised corporation with capital of 100 billion yen (892.86 million U.S. dollars). Under the Tobacco Business Law drafted in 1984, the Ministry of Finance is required to forever own at least-one-half of the issued shares of Japan Tobacco.

Indeed, officials at the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s acknowledge that the biggest challenge to Japan joining the WHO draft will be problems put forward from the finance ministry.

“No concrete directions (about the convention) have been released from WHO. But the biggest opposition to accepting the convention will be from the Ministry of Finance,” says Hidaka Mori of the Health Promotion and Nutrition Section of the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Already, Japan Tobacco is protesting the health ministry’s proposal, unveiled this month, to halve the percentage of Japanese who smoke by 2010. Japan Tobacco argues that adults are responsible for their choice to smoke.

Health officials want to snuff out more of the smoking habit in Japan, because roughly 100,000 Japanese or 12 percent of annual deaths in the country are tobacco-related.

While smoking has dropped since its 1966 peak, when nearly half of the nation and 80 percent of men smoked, Japan has the highest number of adult smokers in the industrialised world.

Roughly 50 percent of adult men and 15 percent of women smoke, according to Japan Tobacco.

But the government benefits from revenues in the form of cigarette taxes, which reached Yen 2.4 trillion (21.4 billion dollars) last year and accounted for 2.5 percent of annual tax revenues.

Around 340 billion cigarettes are sold in Japan each year, including imports.

Japan Tobacco’s profits in fiscal year 1997, ending in March last year, was 57.3 billion yen (511.6 million dollars). In addition to domestic sales, Japan Tobacco exports tobacco products chiefly to South-east Asian countries through its wholly-owned export company, JT International KK.

According to data released by Japan Tobacco, there are currently 25,517 tobacco farmers across the country. Most of them are full-time tobacco suppliers who sell produce directly to Japan Tobacco.

Watanabe says much of the problem lies in the fact that the Tobacco Business Law gives the Finance Ministry the upper hand in Japan, a situation that has greatly weakened the national anti- smoking campaign.

For instance, a major bone of contention with activists are the more than 500,000 cigarette-vending machines across Japan. Sales through the vending machines were more than 1.5 trillion yen — about 40 percent of the total sales.

As far back as 1990, the epidemiology department of the National Institute of Public Health reported that 61 percent of junior high school boys and 77 percent of senior high school boys who were smokers, purchased cigarettes through vending machines.

The Ministry of Health and Welfare reports that under the Tobacco Business Law, it is difficult to prohibit vending machines.

Japanese activists are also against rampant cigarette advertising, which they say play a key role in the increase in the number of young women smokers.

“The situation is terrible in Japan,” says Yoshi Isayama, a lawyer who is appearing for seven plaintiffs suing Japan Tobacco for their lung cancer. “Warning labels on cigarette packs and advertising are so vague, they have no meaning.”

No Japanese law prohibits the tobacco advertisements, which feature slim, foreign young women on huge billboards, on public transport and even in cinemas.

“The image is of a smoker being cool and encourages more young women to smoke,” concludes Mori of the Health and Welfare Ministry.