Media reports that the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is weighing significantly easing the conditions for allowing smoking in restaurants and bars in its planned measure to curb indoor smoking bode ill for efforts to combat health damage from secondhand smoke. An apparent compromise with the tobacco lobby within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, the reported plan marks a substantial setback from the ministry's original plan for prohibiting indoor smoking in public spaces — an area in which Japan is deemed to lag far behind many other countries. The ministry should reconsider whether the measure serves its intended purpose of promoting public health.

The government is seeking to revise the law on public health to incorporate measures to prevent passive smoking — in time for Tokyo to host the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games under a "tobacco-free" environment per the request from the World Health Organization. However, the health ministry proposal to ban indoor smoking in public spaces met with strong objections from the LDP's pro-tobacco lawmakers, and the government gave up submitting relevant legislation featuring even watered-down measures during this year's regular Diet session.

Under the ministry's plan, smoking will be prohibited within the premises of medical institutions and elementary, junior high and high schools. Upon protests from the LDP tobacco lobby, the ministry had to water down its original idea of banning smoking inside restaurants and bars — but still allowing such establishments to create segregated smoking areas — by making small establishments with floor space of up to 30 sq. meters exempt from the rule. But even that plan was rejected by the LDP lawmakers, who insisted that people should be ensured of "the right to smoke" and that segregated smoking areas would be enough to address the problem of passive smoking.