JAPAN Saturday, March 28, 1998
In a smokers' nirvana, lighting up is crucial to economic growth
By RUSSELL SKELTON, Herald Correspondent in Tokyo
IT IS difficult to avoid Japan's imposing white cigarette vending machines. Rows of them greet you in the basement of Narita international airport like old friends. They are also found standing outside each subway station and on most city street corners. There are more than 510,000 of them in Japan servicing an estimated 34 million smokers.
As a minor concession to the nation's largely ignored and all too timid anti-smoking lobby, the machines turn themselves off at 11pm and on again just five hours later.
Japan is a smoker's nirvana and Japan's Government wants to keep it that way. At around $A3 a packet, smoking costs about half as much as a cup of coffee. When most of the world is turning off the habit, Japan's health authorities seem unconcerned. There are no stern health warnings on cigarette packets and smokers can light up just about anywhere - on "bullet" trains, in restaurants, in taxis.
And for smokers who may doubt the merits of the habit, there are hundreds of billboards urging people to light up because it is fashionable, sophisticated and even healthy. In Tokyo's Shibuya district, a mecca for teenagers, giant video screens beam down the fetching images of beautiful models frolicking on tropical beaches, cigarettes in hand.
Mr Bungaku Watanabe, an anti-smoking campaigner and director of the Tobacco Problems Information Centre, says most tobacco advertising is directed at young people. "The figures suggest smoking by minors is on the rise," he said. "I estimate that 20 per cent of smokers are under age."
Unlike Australia and the United States, business is booming for Japan's tobacco industry. Last year a record 348.3 billion cigarettes were sold - an increase of 4.1 per cent from a year earlier. The increased consumption was despite surveys that suggest 690,000 Japanese had given up the habit.
Japan's tolerance of smoking can be blamed directly on the Liberal Democratic Party Government of the Prime Minister, Mr Ryutaro Hashimoto, himself a notorious chain-smoker. Last year national tax revenues from cigarette smoking topped 2 trillion yen (more than $A29 billion) despite a rise in consumption taxes. The windfall was split between regional and national governments. Tobacco taxes account for almost 2 per cent of all tax revenues.
The Government actually owns two-thirds of the tobacco industry through shares it holds in Japan Tobacco Inc, a corporation that regulates and promotes the sale of cigarettes. Last year the company had a staggering turnover of 838 trillion yen (about $12 trillion). In 1996 it paid dividends to the Government of 9.3 billion yen. Other investors include the nation's top banks and trading houses.
Control of the tobacco industry is in the hands of the Ministry of Finance, a bureaucracy currently under investigation for its corrupt links to banks and financial institutions, rather than the Health Ministry. In Japan smoking is not viewed as a health issue; it is a revenue stream that must be kept flowing.
Is it any wonder then that the Finance Ministry has until this month refused to allow insurance companies in Japan to offer discounted premiums for non-smoking policy holders?
When a US company asked for permission to launch discounted policies about 20 years back, it was told by the Finance Ministry that the application was "premature".
There are some signs of change. As a small concession to public opinion, the Tobacco Institute has decided to stop broadcasting radio or television commercials promoting smoking from next week. Ads will not be banned, they will just not run under a new voluntary code dreamt up by the industry body.
More significantly, as a concession to the new "Big Bang" financial reforms, the Finance Ministry has now accepted applications from two life insurers to offer cut-rate policies to non-smokers.
Japan has virtually no regulations controlling smoking and remains the only country in the Western world that permits tobacco advertising in public places, even though it was banned in the US and Australia 20 years ago.
Politicians and consumers continually complain about Japan's rising health bill, but they refuse to do anything about one of the nation's most health damaging habits.
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