This April, Pharmacia KK, a pharmaceutical company based in Tokyo, surveyed 200 major corporations listed on the stock exchange about their smoking policies.
In case you're wondering why this particular company did the survey, it's because Pharmacia manufactures Nicorette, that gum that helps smokers quit their filthy, disgusting habit.
The author of the bill is Minshuto's Akira Nagatsuma, who was himself once burned by a cigarette. When he learned that young children had also been injured this way, he said he felt ``there is something fundamentally wrong about walking down a crowded street, swinging a hazardous flaming substance that emits intense heat.''
Yes, and I've been burned by a smoking pedestrian prick, too. Mostly, it's these frickin' oyaji who swing their hand out by their side while holding a cigarette. They are completely oblivious to what they're doing. And in Japan, where the sidewalks are very narrow and commuters are packed together as they walk to work, it's easy to get burned (or at least to choke on all the second hand smoke).
