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Japan: can local action do the trick?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
In a number of areas of law and policy in Japan today, the cutting edge has been shifting from the national government to local governments. Historically, local governments have been disabled by the constitutionally stronger central government, but in recent years, power seems to be shifting as the central government's inertia during the 1990s decade long recession has weakened its footing.
This trend is evident in tobacco policy where local tobacco control efforts are actively underway. While the 2000 failure of a national tobacco consumption reduction plan ("Healthy Japan 21" or HJ21) illustrated the central government's limited engagement in tobacco control policy, since the early 1990s, local governments have stepped forward to establish increased non-smoking areas in public spaces and controls on cigarette butt littering. Now, two new contentious issues are emerging: controls on outdoor vending machines, and aggressive local public health promotion campaigns.
With regards to non-smoking areas, local governments
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