Call for a Smoke-Free 2020 Summer Games

(ATR) Anti-smoking activists in Japan are campaigning for restaurants and bars in the country to go completely smoke-free by the Tokyo 2020 Games.

Smoking is widespread throughout Japanese culture, with cigarettes readily for sale at vending machines and stores seemingly everywhere.

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) it is a requirement for host cities to hold a "healthy games" and activists feel with only 10 percent of the capital's bars and restaurants being smoke-free they are not abiding by that standard.

Recent host cities of the Games have all passed legislation banning smoking in public areas including restaurants. Laws have been passed in Japan encouraging these areas to limit exposure to secondhand smoke by adding barriers or separate areas. However, there are no punishments for those who refuse to comply.

The country is expected to pass legislation soon that will ban smoking in or near public areas according to Dr. Manabu Sakuta, chairman of the non-governmental organization Japan Society for Tobacco Control (JSTC).

"We as JSTC would like to make sure we can host the next 2020 Olympic Games in an environment in which passive smoking is prevented to a level that is praised by the world," Sakuta said during an appearance before The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan on Tuesday.

He says the Japanese media, by not reporting on the dangers of smoking, should bear some of the blame for the country's delay in becoming smoke-free. Sakuta believes his country's efforts to prevent passive smoking are no better than that of a developing nation.

The JTSC says about 15,000 people in Tokyo die from smoking-related illnesses each year, about 10 percent of the national number.

Written by Courtney Colquitt

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