A health ministry panel has approved a draft plan seeking to decrease the smoking rate to 12.2 percent by fiscal 2022, facilitating the ministry's long-hampered wish to officially set a target figure, it has been learned.
The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has sought several times since 1999 to set a target figure for cutting the smoking rate. However, it was foiled each time by stiff opposition from the tobacco industry and related ministries and agencies.
The ministry's latest plan for decreasing the smoking rate by nearly 40 percent to 12.2 percent or less by fiscal 2022 was presented Wednesday at a meeting of the panel for discussing cancer prevention measures. (Yomiuri)
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