Cough! Japan Is Puffer's Paradise With Friends: William Pesek

Commentary by William Pesek

July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Humorist David Sedaris is no longer a smoker, and, oddly, he has Japan to thank for it.

The American author, most recently of ``When You Are Engulfed in Flames,'' kicked his 30-year cigarette habit in Tokyo. Quitting smoking is probably a feat for anyone, yet one needs extra willpower to do it in a true puffer's paradise.

Traveling to this land of dirt-cheap cigarettes and omnipresent ashtrays to beat your addiction is like going to Madrid to give up pork, Prague to escape beer cravings or Beijing to get away from crowds. That didn't keep Sedaris from spending three months in Japan last year, and succeeding.

``I read in a book that the best way to quit smoking was to move, and in Tokyo it's against the law to smoke on the street,'' Sedaris joked recently to Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's ``The Daily Show.'' ``It's not second-hand-smoke-related, it's you put a hole in my Comme des Garcons jacket-related.''

For most of the nation's 127 million people, Japan's views on smoking are anything but a laughing matter. Japan Tobacco Inc., the world's third-largest publicly traded cigarette maker, is 50 percent government-owned. When you consider the tax revenue from its $31.4 billion in domestic tobacco sales, it's no wonder Japan Tobacco has friends in high places.

Some gutsy lawmakers want to more than triple cigarette prices to about $10 a pack. That would put Asia's biggest economy in closer alignment with the anti-smoking movements in other industrialized nations. It also might increase government revenue amid modest economic growth. Japan Tobacco, which markets about 30 cigarette brands in Japan, isn't happy.

`Disastrous Harm'

``It would be disastrous harm for consumers first and the industry as well,'' President Hiroshi Kimura said last month. ``Any tax hike is going to be very challenging for us.''

Well, good.

This is really a story about Japan -- how the government's tentacles travel around the business world, and vice versa. The Finance Ministry is Japan Tobacco's largest shareholder, leaving little doubt anti-smoking efforts will lack teeth. The arrangement has Japan implicitly encouraging smoking.

The tobacco debate is a reminder that as much as we talk about the ``New Japan'' of high technology, anime and hybrid cars, much of the old remains. Politicians are protecting vested interests without considering the bigger picture.

Kimura complains that most smokers would quit if the price of cigarettes were tripled. Some economists say so many people would stop smoking that tax revenue may actually decline.

It's About Health

Yet the end -- a more productive workforce that takes fewer smoking breaks and has lower health-care burdens -- would justify the means. This isn't just a fiscal issue. This isn't about shares in Japan Tobacco falling. It's a public-health issue.

Ideas such as banning tobacco advertising, sponsoring tobacco-control programs and public-service announcements haven't caught on in Japan. All this says much about the government's economic policies.

Japan has the world's largest public debt, and the demographics make pledges to reduce it unrealistic. With the population both aging and shrinking, Japan must find new revenue, while funding the skyrocketing health-care costs.

Cigarettes are an obvious target. The Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled Japan for all but one year since 1955 is known for, literally, making decisions in smoke-filled rooms far from public view. It's unlikely to take a stand on smoking for fear of unnerving a key industry.

Smoky Japan

I don't smoke -- about 40 percent of men in Japan do -- and it's a shame on some level. Cigarettes are the biggest bargain in high-cost Tokyo. Friends in countries I visit routinely ask me for cartons of cigarettes. (A note to customs officials: I always refuse.) Aside from the low cost, graphic health warnings are non-existent and bans on smoking are few and far between.

It's easier today to avoid second-hand smoke than five years ago. Japan only recently discovered the concept of non-smoking sections in restaurants. When you can find one, you are normally surrounded by smokers anyway. Airports are loaded with smoking areas, as are many train platforms. Tokyo bars are so smoky that you wonder if you have been transported back to New York's Algonquin Hotel in Dorothy Parker's day.

Japan has more cigarette-vending machines -- 439,000 -- than there are people in Brunei or the Maldives. One supposed anti- smoking revolution requires customers to use a special ID card to use them. It's meant to reduce underage smoking, and it's a wash. Cigarettes are easily procured 24 hours a day at Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores.

Japan Tobacco should stop bellyaching. There are plenty of potential customers in China, India, Indonesia and elsewhere. Officials at a World Health Organization conference earlier this year predicted 1 billion people would die from tobacco-related disease this century. Think of all the money that Japan Tobacco can make by helping the globe reach that depressing goal.

The sad reality is that as one nation wises up to the dangers of smoking, plenty of others seem ready to pick up the slack -- and the cigarette lighter. This isn't a laughing matter.

(William Pesek is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: William Pesek in Tokyo at wpesek@bloomberg.net