Overseas, Smoking Is One of Life's Small Pleasures

By ANDREW POLLACK

TOKYO Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare made a breakthrough this
year. For the first time, its annual white paper directly stated that
smoking and secondhand smoke were societal health problems.

"This is the starting point for tobacco control in Japan," cheered Yumiko
MochizukiKobayashi, a ministry official in charge of antismoking efforts.

Thirtythree years after the United States Surgeon General warned of the
hazards of smoking, some countries are still only at the starting point of
tobacco control. Do they discount the health and social costs? Why are
Americans dining out in Seoul or Paris forced to gag on the sort of fumes
banned back home?

Some countries do restrict smoking. In others, there is less awareness of
smoking's hazards. One powerful response from many people is that smoking
is a personal habit, harmful but not overly so, that should be tolerated by
government and society.

These people look on with amused condescension at what they consider the
dictatorship of the American antismoking lobby in the United States.
Italy's minister of health, Rosy Bindi, in an interview with an Italian
newspaper, called it America's "puritanical crusade."

Haven't Americans learned anything, they wonder, from the futile attempt to
outlaw drinking during Prohibition?

"The U.S. situation looks like group hysteria," said Jiro Ikushima, a
Japanese novelist who says he smokes 100 cigarettes a day to get his
creative juices flowing.

On the other hand, many countries have antismoking policies that the
United States is only now contemplating in its proposed settlement with
American cigarette makers.

Canada's warnings on cigarette packs are bigger and blunter: "Smoking can
kill you," they say. About 30 countries, including less developed ones like
Afghanistan, Nigeria and Laos, completely ban advertising.

And when it comes to what some experts say is one of the most effective
deterrents to smoking heavy taxes on cigarettes the United States is
a softie.

Taxes account for 85 percent of the price of a pack in Denmark, 73 percent
in Germany and 45 percent in South Africa. In the United States, the
average is only about 35 percent.

Still, the percentages of smokers in the United States about 28 percent
of men and 24 percent of women are among the lowest in the world.

In France, where tobaccocontrol regulations are ignored as routinely as
jaywalking laws, about 40 percent of men and 27 percent of women smoke. For
the French, smoking seems an indelible part of the cafe scene; it even
conveys a certain intellectual air. And whatever propensity French culture
has for smoking seems to carry across the Atlantic: the smoking rate in
Quebec is higher than in the rest of Canada.

In Japan, nearly 60 percent of men smoke. Cigarette ads are allowed on
latenight television and the warning on packs is a relatively polite
reminder not to smoke too much and to mind one's manners.

Especially in Japan's crowded cities, smoking and drinking relieve the
stress that in the United States might be worked off by a run through a
park or a game of tennis. Japan is also a society that values group
harmony, making it hard for a nonsmoker to challenge office smokers.

In the United States, that social reserve hardly exists. What America has
clearly done more of than other nations is fight over smoking, particularly
in court. Other nations legislate rather than litigate, said Eric
LeGresley, legal counsel for the NonSmokers' Rights Association in Canada.

The United States also leads most nations in restricting smoking in
restaurants and public places, which LeGresley attributed to the strength
of local grassroots movements.

But in many countries, individuals wouldn't consider suing a cigarette
manufacturer for what they regard as their own choice to smoke or
wouldn't need to sue, because national insurance covers their hospital bills.

Outside the United States, antismoking groups are often small,
particularly in Asia, where citizen groups in general are weak and there is
a traditional respect for central authority.

That central authority, of course, can act to cut smoking. The most
conspicuous example in Asia is Singapore, where the government, which
regulates personal activities from chewing gum to owning cars, also imposes
stiff fines for selling cigarettes to minors and breaking other
antismoking laws.

But in some nations, including Spain and Italy, the government owns the
tobacco monopoly, giving it a financial stake in promoting smoking. Japan's
government owns two thirds of Japan Tobacco, a former monopoly that still
controls 80 percent of the market.

In the past, when Japan's health ministry tried to warn about smoking, the
wording was watered down by the more powerful Finance Ministry, Dr.
MochizukiKobayashi said. This year, embarrassed by its failure in another
area, stemming the spread of AIDS in hemophiliacs, the ministry stood its
ground.

In general, smoking rates are falling in the developed world but rising in
developing countries, the future market for American companies facing
restrictions at home. In those countries, smoking has cachet, an
association with an affluent, wideopen American life style.

In Vietnam, an estimated 73 percent of men smoke. In China, already the
world's leading consumer of cigarettes, the percentage is over 60 percent,
and cigarettes are often offered to visitors along with tea.

Social traditions have kept the smoking rate among women in many Asian
countries below 10 percent. But that rate is starting to rise because women
view smoking as a sign of liberation.

One explanation for a lack of concern about smoking is that such nations
tend to have more pressing health problems, like infectious diseases.

Despite these obstacles and attitudes, antitobacco movements and laws are
spreading. And the proposed settlement in the United States, which needs
government approval, is already proving influential.

In Hong Kong, antitobacco legislation enacted in June was toughened to
include some of the same restrictions on advertising that tobacco companies
accepted in the proposed American settlement.

Slovakia recently imposed restrictions on smoking in public places, and
Turkey a ban on advertising. Even in Japan, the number of nosmoking
airplane flights, bullettrain cars and workplaces is increasing.

And last month, inspired by the American litigation, a group of Japanese
lawyers and antitobacco activists decided to sue Japan Tobacco.

Copyright 1997 The New York Times