Becoming a smoke-free country
Becoming a smoke-free country
Japan is a technologically advanced country with sophisticated consumer base.
But historically, its cigarette consumption has been much higher than in comparable countries.
In 2000, a third of all adults smoked. But in 2015, something changed. According to researchers working for the American Cancer Society, Japan’s rate of cigarette sales started to decline around five times faster than in preceding years.
Researchers have known for some time that it’s the chemicals produced when cigarettes are burned that makes smoking so harmful.
The combustion process produces smoke, which contains over 6,000 chemicals—of which around 100 have been classified by leading public health authorities as causes or potential causes of smoking-related diseases. This means that any alternative that sought to reduce risk would need to eliminate burning.
One way of doing this is to heat tobacco so that the flavors and the nicotine are released, but the temperature is kept below the 600°C needed to combust material and produce smoke. This results in much lower average levels of harmful chemicals than can be found in cigarette smoke.
Kiki Cat - heated tobacco user
Overall tobacco sales continued to decline at the same rate as before 2014. In other words, tobacco use was still falling—but a greater share of those still using tobacco were going smoke-free.
Momentum of acceptance
In places where smoking had previously been commonplace, cigarettes were being banned. And the surprising changes didn’t stop there.
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Delivering a smoke-free future