Asia Times: Anti-tobacco drive clouds smokers' paradise



	August 24, 1999	atimes.com

Japan

Anti-tobacco drive clouds smokers' paradise
By Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO - Japan, sometimes called a smokers' paradise, is in a tough spot as it struggles to respond to the latest anti-smoking campaign by the World Health Organization (WTO).

The campaign, involving an international convention aimed at controlling tobacco and reducing the number of smokers around the world, will target all nations by 2003. WHO officials hope to have a protocol outlined by October.

The convention will confirm the 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 Center in Tokyo. This 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 - 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 industrialized 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.

Under the Tobacco Business Law drafted in 1984, the Ministry of Finance is required to forever own at least 50 percent of the issued shares of Japan Tobacco. Indeed, ''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, while health officials say that roughly 100,000 Japanese deaths a year - 12 percent of the total - 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 industrialized world. Roughly 50 percent of adult men and 15 percent of women smoke, according to Japan Tobacco.

The government benefits from revenues in the form of cigarette taxes, which reached 2.4 trillion yen ($21.4 billion) 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 profit in fiscal 1997 was 57.3 billion yen ($511.6 million). In addition to domestic sales, Japan Tobacco exports tobacco products chiefly to Southeast Asian countries through its wholly-owned export company, JT International KK.

According to data released by Japan Tobacco, there are 25,517 tobacco farmers in Japan, most of whom sell 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 is the more than 500,000 cigarette-vending machines across Japan. Sales through the vending machines account for about 40 percent of the total, and under the Tobacco Business Law it is difficult to prohibit them.

Japanese activists are also against rampant cigarette advertising, which they say plays a key role in the increase in the number of young women smokers. There is no law against advertisements, which feature images of slim, foreign young women on huge billboards, on public transport and in cinemas.

(Inter Press Service)

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