Interview on Tobacco Control and End Game in Japan
Christopher Rathbone
Foreign Associate @ City-Yuwa Partners | Attorney, Legal Writing
An interview with Lance E. Lee in late December 2023. The interview can be seen here.
0:00 Not a “ban” - The end game of tobacco control is not a "ban" but to reach the point where there are very few tobacco users.
1:03 The massive impact of tobacco - 100 million deaths in the 20th century and still on course for a billion deaths in the 21st century.
3:29 Smokers are victims and even in Japan most smokers regret having started smoking. The focus for public health in the 21st century is prevention of non-communicable diseases.
6:49 Tobacco has many impacts, which although small compared to the health impact of smoking and secondhand smoke are small, are significant issues. Examples include nicotine poisoning of children and smoking as a cause of fire. Japan does not have so-called fire-safe cigarettes. Tobacco cultivation, processing, production, consumption and post consumption waste all have severe environmental impacts. One cigarette butt contaminates up to 1000 liters of water.
9:52 Among novel tobacco products, the tobacco companies are promoting heated tobacco products in Japan. In Japan, the healthcare community supports tobacco control but there is little support outside of the healthcare community.
12:53 As a starting point for tobacco control, there has been some success in secondhand smoke protection including the Tokyo secondhand smoke protection ordinance.
17:04 In particular, there has been success in Japan in reducing exposure of children to secondhand smoke. Tobacco smoke contains many carcinogens and toxins and many of them are invisible.
领英推荐
Expert opinion - American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
With more than 50,000 members from over 132 nations, ASHRAE is a diverse organization dedicated to advancing the arts and sciences of heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration to serve humanity and promote a sustainable world.
"The only means of avoiding health effects and eliminating indoor ETS exposure is to ban all smoking activity inside and near buildings. "
20:35 Japan Tobacco, in addition to selling tobacco products all over the world, seeks to defeat health policy worldwide. One example is JT's opposition to plain-packaging. Plain packaging of tobacco is a common sense policy that removes the promotional, marketing and advertising features on packs of tobacco, but leaves the health warnings, tax stamps and other features required by government. Example:
24:00 The end game of tobacco control requires that youth don't start smoking. One interesting initiative in advertising of tobacco in Japan is the proposal of Jon Heese for Ibaraki prefecture of banning tobacco displays and other point of sales advertising.
Getting involved. These are a few of the organizations promoting tobacco control in Japan.
Recruiting Lead in Japan
11 个月Great post Christopher Rathbone Keep shining a light on the dark world of Tobacco and it’s hold on so many, too many…. When the Tobacco industry pay good salaries, higher than other industries, spend a small fortune on clever marketing. We need these posts!