After-Work Drinking Culture Increased Smoking

There is a culture that is met in all states. We speak about after-work drinking culture which is accompanied by numerous cigarettes. This culture can be met in Japan too.

People who don’t smoke smell like a smoker because they are married with a smoker and are descendent from smoking stock. Even just eating lunch at a burger joint leaves their lungs become filled with tobacco.

Japan is a puffer's paradise in comparison to New Zealand, where four years have passed since restaurants and bars were made smoke free.


In Japan cigarettes are very cheap, about 300 yen a packet. While New Zealand is working toward banning tobacco displays in supermarkets and dairies, in Japan it's impossible to miss cigarettes. They are visible and available 24 hours in vending machines and stores.

About 40 percent of Japanese men and 13 percent of women are smokers, according to the latest estimates from Japan Tobacco Inc.

In fact, while the smoking rate for Japanese men is one of the highest in the developed world, it has halved in the past 40 years as awareness of the health risks increases.

But in this year was approved a new legislation. In this way Japanese smokers needed for ID cards for to buy cigarettes from vending machines, in a bid to control underage smoking. Meanwhile, the Japanese Government has been contemplating a tobacco tax rise too.

In this way Japan became not the easiest place to quit smoking.

Most of people start smoking only because of their job and depression. A smoker said: "I was surprised recently to find a friend puffing away over drinks, since I had never seen him light up on my previous three visits to Tokyo. He explained that he had started again after a seven-year break because he had a new job and it was important for his business relationships to smoke."