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Change Your Life! |
Japanese tobacco industry, politicians snuff out anti-smoking targets |
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May 15, 2000
TOKYO, MAY 14 (AP) - When health officials drew up Japan's latest 10-year national fitness plan, they decided numerical targets were just what the doctor ordered.
So, for the first time, the Healthy Japan 21 initiative features quantifiable goals, from reducing the number of heavy drinkers by 20 percent to getting people to walk an extra 1,000 steps a day.
But when it comes to smoking, the plan loses its precision. It promises only to ensure that people get "sufficient knowledge" about the risks of smoking.
The wording is hardly a surprise. The powerful Finance Ministry owns 60 percent of the nation's largest tobacco company and is committed by law to "promote the health and development of the Japanese tobacco industry."
With a male smoking rate of 54 percent - far higher than in America or Europe - critics are asking whether bureaucratic pride and industry profits aren't taking precedence over public safety.
According to a World Health Organization study cited in the plan, cigarettes were responsible for up to 95,000 premature deaths in Japan in 1995. That was 12 percent of all deaths that year.
Smoking-related disease and deaths added dlrs 11.1 billion to the nation's health bill in 1993, according to a private foundation affiliated with the Health Ministry.
"Shortsighted interests have been given priority over the health of the nation," said an editorial in the Asahi, one of Japan's largest newspapers.
The ministry says the plan is intended to help people make their own lifestyle choices. It says the decision not to set a specific target was made after hearing a variety of opinions from smokers and the tobacco industry.
"The Health Ministry really wants to reduce smoking, but it can't overcome the structural barriers," said Bungaku Watanabe, a veteran anti-smoking activist who organized an unsuccessful petition drive to include numerical smoking targets in the plan.
Japan is a smoker's paradise. Nonsmoking sections in restaurants are a relatively new concept. Smoking cars on trains are often more numerous than nonsmoking ones. Cigarette vending machines are everywhere.
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