Tag: smoking

The war on cigarettes in Korea continues:

Lawmakers will start debating Tuesday whether to make it mandatory for cigarette makers to print photos on cigarette packs showing the dangers of smoking.

The National Assembly Health and Welfare Committee will review the government’s proposal to revise laws so they require warning photos such as damaged lungs or rotten teeth. Currently, tobacco makers are required only to print a health warning.

Observers said there is a good chance the revisions will take place. The government has made 11 unsuccessful attempts to have warning photos on cigarette packs since 2002.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I don’t smoke, but it seems to me that the business owners are making a good point about the legality of the ban:

Twenty owners of restaurants and bars will ask the Constitutional Court to review the smoking ban imposed on all such establishments.

An online community of smokers, I Love Smoking, said Friday that some of its members who run eateries will file a petition with the court next month as they believe the new law, which bans smoking at all cafes, restaurants and bars, regardless of their size, infringes on their basic rights.

The move came after the restaurant owners saw a sharp decline in sales after the expanded ban on smoking took effect on Jan. 1.

“Sales have dropped more than 30 percent since the law went into effect. It is threatening my livelihood,” Kwon Huck-nam, who runs a restaurant selling grilled beef tripe in Seoul, told The Korea Times.

Like Kwon, many owners of restaurants, especially meat restaurants and bars where many patrons smoke while drinking, have faced similar difficulties due to the regulation.

“Given that cigarettes and alcohol go together in most cases, many customers are leaving their old hangouts because they cannot smoke there any longer,” Kwon said. “In this regard, the regulation is unfair and too harsh for people like us. It infringes on the freedom of business and the right to property.” [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but is it a stretch to imagine someone in the future wanting to ban alcohol in business establishments as well?

It looks like the Korean government is trying to get the easy tax revenue from smokers on the basis of public health:

South Korea has proposed a tax hike that would nearly double cigarette prices as the government tries to reduce one of the world’s highest smoking rates among adult males.

The proposal on Thursday was immediately criticised by the main opposition party, highlighting the difficulty in implementing anti-smoking regulations in a country where the health risks associated with smoking are not widely publicised.

The proposal calls for a more than 100 percent tax increase on a pack of cigarettes, which would double current prices that range between $1.9-$2.4 – far less than the $12 per pack that smokers pay in Australia, which recently toughened its anti-smoking laws.

The initiative also suggested banning cigarette advertisements in convenience stores and making graphic warning
labels on cigarette packs mandatory.

KT&G, which sells 60 percent of all cigarettes bought in the country, declined to comment on the tax proposal.

South Koreans are among the heaviest smokers in the world: just under half of all adult males smoke, government data shows, compared to an average of 25.4 percent in the 34 countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.  [Al Jazeera]

You can read more at the link, but if this is really about improving public health why isn’t the government also trying to double the price of alcohol as well?  I think a strong argument could be made that the affects of alcohol is worse for public health than smoking.

A Navy study has found that sailors who smoke are more likely to be seperated from the service than non-smokers.

Recruits who enter service as heavy cigarette smokers are nearly twice as likely as nonsmokers to be separated early, mostly due to “substandard behavior,” according to new research aimed at easing the U.S. military’s disturbingly high attrition rate.

For all its achievements over three decades, the volunteer military has had one chronic problem: an alarming washout rate. A third of all new entrants fail to complete initial service obligations, driving up recruiting and training costs.

This shouldn’t be a shock to anyone because when I was in high school back in the day, the people who smoked were usually people who had authority problems and smoked just to piss people off.

Now this is interesting:

Now it appears pre-service smoking habits could well be the equal of a diploma for predicting if a recruit will succeed in service, said Dr. Eli S. Flyer, a former senior manpower analyst with the Defense Department.

I can’t imagine the military not letting people enlist because they smoke. Especially with the recruiting problems of today.

Now this I find hard to believe:

Just more than half — 51 percent — of all servicemembers smoked in 1980. Smoking declined to a 29.9 percent level in 1998, but smoking increased to 33.8 percent according to the 2002 survey of Health Related Behaviors Among Military Personnel.

Only 33.8% of people in the military smoke? I would think it would be around 50% or more. The military has so many smokers IMHO because it is the easiest way to sham out of work. The laziest soldiers I know are all smokers who hide in the smoke shack and they hide there because the people in charge of them smoke to and are in the same smoke shack. Just about every soldier that I know of who gets into trouble is a smoker.

As many of you know 2ID has started a campaign to ban smoking on the 2ID camps. All this does is cause the smokers to go to the far off smoking designated point to smoke removing them from work that much longer. What the army needs to do is limit the number of smoke breaks to one in the morning for 10 minutes and one in the afternoon for 10 minutes and implement a sign in and sign out roster to track it. If the soldier has to go through a lot of hurdles to take a smoke break that will cut the number of smokers because many of them smoke just to get out of work.

This is just one person’s opinion, so feel free to comment if your unit has nothing but hard working smokers because mine doesn’t and I’m willing to bet many other units are the same way.