Japan: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tobacco Control Policies and the Use of Heated Tobacco Products
A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601). This special issue belongs to the section "Global Health".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2020) | Viewed by 121518
Special Issue Editors
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Interests: tobacco control; global health policy; health policy evaluation; harm reduction; regulatory policies for tobacco and cannabis; public health; alternative nicotine/tobacco products
Shannon Gravely, Ph.D., is a Research Assistant Professor within the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (the ITC Project) in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo. The ITC Project conducts rigorous evaluation studies of the tobacco control policies and regulations of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) across 29 countries. Dr. Gravely’s role in tobacco control research within the ITC Project is in systematic evaluation of key tobacco control policies at the population level. She is involved in the development and implementation of international research studies including cohort surveys, data analyses and dissemination of research findings. Her research includes examining the impact of policies in several domains of the FCTC, including health warnings, smoke-free policies, cessation (particularly the role nicotine vaping products may play in harm reduction) and plain packaging. Her research interests also include studies on how cannabis regulatory policies may play a role in problematic patterns of cannabis and tobacco use, whether cannabis legalization is associated with an increase in co-use of cannabis and tobacco and whether cannabis legalization results in a decrease in smoking cessation.
Department of Health, Behavior & Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA
Interests: Ryan David Kennedy is a tobacco control researcher interested in the role policy plays in addressing the global tobacco epidemic. Kennedy works in low- and middle-income countries through his role with the Institute for Global Tobacco Control. Kennedy works in many regulatory domains, including point-of-sale, health warning labels and clean air laws. Domestically, Kennedy has a program of research with the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Programs, funded through the Hopkins CERSI (Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation) working to understand e-cigarette advertising of product features including flavors. Emerging tobacco products including e-cigarettes present interesting public health challenges. Kennedy has a long history of working on clean air issues and has studied tobacco smoke, wood smoke and ambient pollution in numerous settings. Kennedy uses a variety of research methods including observational studies, surveys, focus groups and key informant interviews.
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are organizing a Special Issue titled “Japan: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Tobacco Control Policies and the Use of Heated Tobacco Products” for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes articles and communications in the interdisciplinary area of environmental health sciences and public health. For detailed information on the journal, we refer you to https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph.
Several countries around the world have implemented strong tobacco control policies in line with the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC); however, this has not been the case in Japan. Although Japan ratified the WHO FCTC in June 2004, it has not implemented any of the WHO FCTC policies at the highest level. Among the WHO MPOWER demand-reduction measures (corresponding to WHO FCTC Articles 6, 8, 11/12, and 14), Japan has scored poorly in every category, except for taxes. For example, Japan has among the weakest smoke-free laws in the world (where smoking is allowed in most indoor public venues, including restaurants), small health warnings (30% text warnings), no bans on the use of misleading descriptors such as “light” or “mild”, no laws prohibiting advertising, promotion and sponsorship of tobacco/cigarettes, and only partial coverage for smoking cessation treatments (and no national tobacco cessation strategy).
Relatively few scientific articles have focused on the impact of Japan’s tobacco control efforts, but with more recent possible changes in policies being planned (e.g., smoke-free venues at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games), this is an ideal time for research on where Japan stands now in tobacco control policies and on the impact of its tobacco control measures to date.
However, Japan is also noteworthy for another reason. Heated tobacco products (HTPs) have been nationally available for sale since 2016, and while HTPs have been marketed by the tobacco industry in nearly 40 countries since September 2017, these products (particularly Philip Morris’ IQOS) have been embraced most rapidly in Japan, where estimates are that HTPs have replaced nearly one-third of the cigarettes consumed in just three years. Although HTPs are legal, Japan has banned the sale of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes. Given the intensive introduction of HTPs in many countries, there is a need for scientific studies on the impact of HTPs in Japan.
This Special Issue will be a timely and important contribution to our knowledge of the impact of current tobacco control policies, and on the use of heated tobacco products in Japan. We invite the submission of original research articles or systematic reviews with a focus on:
- Japan’s current tobacco market landscape and policies/regulations on cigarettes and/or HTPs (and other noncigarette tobacco/nicotine products);
- Prevalence and/or consumption of tobacco products (e.g., cigarettes, heated tobacco products): patterns of use, reasons for use, relationship between the use of HTPs and cigarettes;
- Effectiveness of Japan’s tobacco control policies (e.g., health warnings, smoke-free, taxes, product regulation);
- Economic analyses on the substitutability of HTPs and cigarettes;
- Product analyses of emissions, biomarkers of HTPs from Japan, including especially studies that compare HTPs to cigarettes and possibly to e-cigarettes;
- Impact of tobacco industry marketing in Japan for cigarettes and/or HTPs.
The timeline for this Special Issue is on the fast track, with the objective of its publication before the 2020 Japan Olympics in August. Thus, the closing date for submission of papers for this special issue will be 15 March 2020.
Dr. Shannon Gravely
Dr. Ryan Kennedy
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- Japan
- Smoking
- Tobacco control policies
- WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)
- Noncombustible tobacco/nicotine products
- Heated tobacco products
- Electronic cigarettes
- Harm reduction
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