■Nathan Shiga: April 14
The overall sale of cigarettes in 2017 aggregated 145.5 billion, down by 13.4% over the previous year to the lowest in history since 1990 when the statistics were taken for the first time, says the Tobacco Institute of Japan.
The volume of tobacco sales dropped successively over the past two years to a half of the peak time volume of 348.3 billion in 1997, says the institute. The downturn trend is partly due, for one, to an overall fall in the number of smokers and, for two, to that more smokers are switching to a thermal tobacco that requires no lighter.
With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in view, a legislation is currently up for deliberation in the parliament to tighten regulations to ban smoking in eating/drinking joints.
A number of major restaurant chains are fast readjusting services toward banning smoking and the tobacco sales will further drop in years to come.
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