Jump to full article: Bloomberg News, 2008-07-24
Author: Commentary by William Pesek
Intro: 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. . . .
``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.'' . . .
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. . . .
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.
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