Cigarette Consumption & Post-War Economic Boom in Japan (was Re: yet another US electile disfunction...)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> You are correct.  Prices do not cause people to stop smoking very often.
> They do discourage people from beginnging to smoke.
>
> On Mon, Nov 20, 2000 at 11:16:40AM +1000, Rob Schaap wrote:
> >  I don't say prices don't convince some to quit the habit, but, by and large,
> >  smokers are addicts, and that rather defeats price elasticity.  Also, as the
> >  public assault on smoking has been so concerted for so long, it is hard to
> >  say how much of the decline in smoking is down to the enormous price rises
> >  here.  I do know that poorer people and women now smoke more than any other
> >  group in this country (indeed, young women are taking to it with gusto -
> >  perhaps tobacco's residual image as symbol of quasi-male power projection is
> >  a factor, or its new-found rebellious odour - that and the fact that tobacco
> >  is a form of self-medication for the stresses that attend lower-order
> >  employment - where boredom and tension (both inspirational of the craving,
> >  I've found to my cost) are paradoxically and perpetually coexistent.
> >  There's something very convivial about sharing a cancerous cloud, too.  At
> >  any rate, my gut feeling is your thesis might not hold.
>
> --
> Michael Perelman

*****   DG DISPATCH - ATS: Increase in Cigarette Use Precedes
Increase in Lung Disease Deaths

By Cameron Johnston
Special to DG news

TORONTO, CANADA -- May 9, 2000 -- Japan appears to be headed for a
catastrophic increase in the incidence of chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease -- all as a result of the increase in smoking that
has been going on since the early 1960s.

A similar study in the United States linked the increase in smoking
which took off in the early 1940s with an astronomic increase in COPD
in the mid fifties. Now, it appears that a similar trend is about to
overtake the Japanese health care authorities.

The dire predictions were made in a presentation Monday (May 8) at
the annual meeting of the American Thoracic Society, by Takateru
Izumi, MD, a physician at Shiga Bunka Medical College, in Kyoto,
Japan.

Citing statistics from the Japanese Department of Health and Welfare,
and the Japanese Tobacco Co., Dr. Izumi said the rate of smoking in
Japan increased by 177 per cent between 1960-80. Japanese now consume
more than 3,300 cigarettes per capita each year -- approximately nine
cigarettes per day for every person over the age of 15.

At the same time, the increase in deaths from COPD began to
sky-rocket after 1970 -- increasing by more than 500 per cent by 1995
when there were more than 6,400 deaths from COPD.

The increase in smoking is almost entirely attributable to the
economic boom the Japanese began to experience in the 1960s and
particularly in the 1980s. Cigarette consumption had fallen
throughout the war years, but increased to pre-war levels by 1950.

Meanwhile, kids in Ireland are already paying a steep price for
smoking. According to a study conducted jointly by researchers in the
Irish republic and in Belfast, North Ireland, 12 per cent of 13- and
14-year-olds are regular smokers....

...The cost of cigarettes is a major contributing factor that
encourages younger people to smoke, he said, adding that a package of
20 cigarettes is less expensive in the South than it is in the North.
As it is, a package of cigarettes still costs roughly three times as
much in Ireland as it does in the US, and twice as much as they do in
Canada....

<http://www.pslgroup.com/dg/1d0e5e.htm>   *****

So, if gradual deflationary trends continue in Japan, smoking may
continue to increase as well, especially among youths & women; in
contrast, if Japan collapses into something resembling a Great
Depression, folks may stop smoking altogether....

Yoshie