Smoking in public

Not too long after I started going to bars in Ontario, smoking started to be prohibited. First, it was allowed in a place with a separate ventilation system for the smokers. This resulted in these interesting fishbowls full of smoke in places large enough to have them and an outright ban in smaller places that didn't have room for that. Then, those were prohibited, but smoking was allowed on patios. Eventually, some cities started banning smoking on patios as well (and some cities have banned smoking from public parks, sidewalks etc).

While the laws regarding smoking in bars were passed for the safety of the workers, it was awesome for me too. As someone who doesn't smoke and really doesn't like the smell of cigarettes, this was awesome. I could come home from going out with friends and smell like me instead of stale tobacco.

Japan, however, has no such restrictions on smoking in bars. Or rather, around here, there are no such restrictions. This means that when I go out somewhere that's reasonably busy and a lot of people are smoking, I come home smelling like an ashtray, which sucks. And yes, I'll admit that I've probably been spoiled by living in Ontario for so long where restrictions on smoking in public have been increasingly common. If not for those restrictions, I wouldn't know any other way of going out for a drink.

It is interesting to think about why Japan has not put in place restrictions on smoking in public as these are becoming increasingly common in many places. One could speculate that the lack of restrictions on smoking in public places in Japan are possibly related to the fact that the Japanese government has a large stake in Japan Tobacco Inc. and the courts are not convinced that tobacco use leads to cancer (I'm sure the former is also totally unrelated to the latter).

Another thing that I've found interesting is how different stores end up looking because of the near-lack of restrictions on tobacco displays. While Ontario prohibits large displays of cigarettes behind the counter (instead, the cigarettes are behind opaque doors), here there are sometimes large displays of cigarettes on the customer's side of the counter in addition to colourful displays behind the counter.

There are even vending machines that sell cigarettes, which is pretty wild. There's some sort of age-verifying card to make sure that people under the age of 20 don't buy them, but nobody is there to verify that the person using the card is the person to whom the card was issued so I'm not sure how effective it actually is. It's certainly something that wouldn't exist in Ontario though (if only because there aren't nearly as many vending machines per person).


Anyway, I'm not generally out to act like Canada is better than Japan. I think that all places have their advantages and disadvantages. Some things here are neat or fun or really interesting and I think it would be great if these were exported (especially kotatsu and this style of karaoke and the part where people are extra helpful sometimes). However, I think that this is one thing that is much better in Canada.