TOKYO – Japan’s Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry’s proposal to forbid smoking in restaurants and medical institutions, among other locations, faces an uphill battle, The Japan Times/Chicago Tribune reports. The country will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2020, which is part of the drive to curtail secondhand smoke in public.

With the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games in mind, discussions are underway on measures to regulate smoking in public places in an attempt to prevent secondhand smoke. The smoking ban would include hotel lobbies, restaurants, stations and airport buildings, railways and ships.

Many groups support such a ban but argue penalties should be attached to breaking it. “Imposing penalties, rather than just urging efforts, is necessary,” according to the news source. However, the restaurant industry opposes such a move, arguing that they have no space to accommodate smokers in separate rooms.

Driving the measure is the requirement from the International Olympic Committee that host cities have smoking bans for indoor public spaces as part of the tobacco-free Olympic Games. The World Health Organization rated Japan’s secondhand smoke as the world’s worst. Currently, smoking rates in Japan have been falling, but large numbers of nonsmokers are exposed to secondhand smoke.