Smoking ban mooted in Japan
Keep calm and buy tobacco
A Japanese health ministry panel on Wednesday called for a ban on tobacco smoking in indoor public places, including restaurants, according to a story in The Japan Times.
In a report, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry linked passive smoking to a number of deadly diseases and said that allowing designated smoking spaces within places where smoking was otherwise banned harbored the problem rather than eliminated it.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government wants to combat smoking in public places ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
The ministry for the first time correlated second-hand smoke with disease at four risk levels and cited data for its analysis.
At Level 1, the highest risk level, it linked passive smoking to diseases such as lung cancer, heart disease, cerebral embolism and childhood asthma.
The report said that having designated smoking rooms did not prevent the leakage of cigarette smoke and inflicted passive smoking on cleaning staff.
Japan should “aim at a 100 percent ban on smoking indoors” instead of setting up smoking rooms, the report said.
