Smoking
Getting doctors off the habit
"In 1992, a group of antismoking doctors and dentists started a campaign to ban smoking at medical and public health facilities and to promote antismoking education for students and the public at large. However, I have yet to see antismoking posters at dental clinics and hospitals. Health professionals should play a more active role in tobacco control.
According to the Japan Nursing Association, 24.5 percent of the nation's female nurses smoke, double the rate for women in general. This rate perhaps reflects a strong sense of gender equality among female professionals, but it is nevertheless disturbing. The association is pushing a campaign to reduce the level of workplace smoking among nurses to zero immediately, and to halve the percentage of nurses who smoke anywhere by 2006. The campaign is welcome.
The government, regrettably, is indifferent to measures to protect minors from the ills of smoking. More than 20 percent of first-year junior high male students have smoking experience. For second-year male high school students, the rate rises to more than 50 percent.
Most underage smokers (more than 70 percent of third-year student-smokers) obtain cigarettes from vending machines. The 1900 Japanese law prohibiting underage smoking is rarely enforced. This is a serious problem, since smoking is often linked to juvenile delinquency...
...The nation's future depends on healthy children. For starters, the Finance Ministry and the tobacco industry should abolish tobacco vending machines. School physicians should make more efforts to prevent underage smoking... "
The Japan Times: May 23, 2005
"In 1992, a group of antismoking doctors and dentists started a campaign to ban smoking at medical and public health facilities and to promote antismoking education for students and the public at large. However, I have yet to see antismoking posters at dental clinics and hospitals. Health professionals should play a more active role in tobacco control.
According to the Japan Nursing Association, 24.5 percent of the nation's female nurses smoke, double the rate for women in general. This rate perhaps reflects a strong sense of gender equality among female professionals, but it is nevertheless disturbing. The association is pushing a campaign to reduce the level of workplace smoking among nurses to zero immediately, and to halve the percentage of nurses who smoke anywhere by 2006. The campaign is welcome.
The government, regrettably, is indifferent to measures to protect minors from the ills of smoking. More than 20 percent of first-year junior high male students have smoking experience. For second-year male high school students, the rate rises to more than 50 percent.
Most underage smokers (more than 70 percent of third-year student-smokers) obtain cigarettes from vending machines. The 1900 Japanese law prohibiting underage smoking is rarely enforced. This is a serious problem, since smoking is often linked to juvenile delinquency...
...The nation's future depends on healthy children. For starters, the Finance Ministry and the tobacco industry should abolish tobacco vending machines. School physicians should make more efforts to prevent underage smoking... "
The Japan Times: May 23, 2005
<< Home