世論 What Japan Thinks

The Smoking Cessation Information Centre recently sponsored research to discover what smokers’ reactions to tax hikes in cigarettes would be. They interviewed 1,980 smokers via an internet-based questionnaire at the start of December. This poll is rather timely as there are plans to raise the tobacco tax by a mere 20 yen per packet, to about 290 yen for 20, probably still the cheapest in the developed world.

Of course, people saying they are going to quit and people actually quitting are two different things. All the evidence suggests that raising taxes brings in more money overall, as the rate of quitters never reaches the rate of tax increase. Anything that does something to decrease the number of smokers, however, is most welcome. Simple things like effective smoking segregation at restaurants are not yet implemented here. Even though most restaurants (rather than izakaya pubs-with-food places) are heavily frequented by women (in my experience it’s often over 75%, and quite often, in fact, I am the only man there!) and only about 10% of women smoke, few restaurants are all non-smoking; in fact often it is either 50:50 or no segregation at all!

Also note that at least one in eight do not seem to believe the literature telling you smoking is bad for you, and two-thirds think it’s expensive.
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