Progress in Efforts to Cut Back on Smoking in Movies for Kids

Posted on July 18, 2011 at 3:37 pm

MedPage reports that smoking is down in movies rated G, PG, and PG-13.

Overall, there were about 72% fewer on-screen appearances of smoking and tobacco products in G, PG, and PG-13 movies in 2010 than there were in 2005, according to Stanton Glantz, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues…

For the three studios that had actual written policies to reduce tobacco use in their movies, there was an average drop of 95.8% in tobacco appearances, compared with a fall of just 41.7% for the three major studios and some independent film companies that had no such policies.

Among the three with anti-tobacco policies, 88.2% of their top-grossing youth films never featured smoking or tobacco, compared with 57.4% of those from companies without policies.

“This finding indicates that an enforceable policy aimed at reducing tobacco use in youth-rated movies can lead to substantially fewer tobacco incidents in movies and help prevent adolescent initiation of smoking,” Glantz and colleagues wrote.

Advocacy groups have urged film studios not to make smoking look glamorous and sophisticated. The study relied on scenesmoking.org, which has detailed documentation of the frequency and context of smoking in movies and the impact it has on young viewers. The World Health Organization has recommended an automatic R rating for any movie with tobacco smoking, except for those like “Good Night and Good Luck,” where the smoking is included for historical accuracy.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Reduced Smoking in Hollywood Movies

Posted on August 23, 2010 at 3:59 pm

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a government agency, has listed cigarettes in movies as a key factor in teen smoking. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences has said that studies show a clear link showing that kids who watch movies with smoking are more likely to smoke.
So, it is a small step forward that the CDCP announced last Thursday that scenes of smoking in high-grossing films fell to 1,935 incidents last year, down 49% from the recent peak of 3,967 in 2005.
This may in part be the result of a change in 2007 that includes smoking incidence in MPAA ratings, following four years of requests from state attorneys general and other groups. The MPAA has refused, however, to make smoking an automatic R-rating, even with an exclusion for historical accuracy in films like “Good Night and Good Luck.” “On April 22, 2009, the MPAA interrupted North Carolina Senate debate on landmark smokefree workplace legislation to demand a loophole for smoking in film productions. ‘The motion picture industry worries the bill would prevent actors from smoking on screen,’ reported the Associated Press,” according to Smoke Free Movies. They were successful in getting an exemption written into the law.
A significant factor in reduced smoking onscreen may also be pressure from websites that specifically review smoking in movies. Smoke Free Movies, a project of Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, has a directory of actors with more than three smoking roles. Scene Smoking from Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails, shows how smoking is shown in films, classifying it by whether it is the lead actor, a credited non-star, or an extra, whether the brand is shown, and whether the smoker is a good guy or a bad guy.
The CDCP says:
Although the behaviors and attitudes of family and friends are the main influences on adolescent decisions to use tobacco, the media–films, television, and the Internet–also influence these decisions.5-8 According to recent studies,
* Current movie heroes are three to four times more likely to smoke than are people in real life.5,6,9
* Young people in the United States watch an average of three movies a week, which contain an average of five smoking episodes each, adding up to about 15 exposures to smoking a week. Young people may be exposed to more smoking in movies than in real life.
* A teen whose favorite star smokes is significantly more likely to be a smoker.
* Approximately two-thirds of films seen today show tobacco use, including films that are rated PG or PG-13 and intended for young audiences.
* Films depicting tobacco use are increasing and are reinforcing misleading perceptions that smoking is a widespread, socially desirable, and normal behavior, and they fail to convey the long-term consequences of tobacco use.
Smoke Free movies notes, “The 390,000 kids recruited to smoke each year by the smoking they see on screen are worth $4 billion in lifetime sales to the tobacco companies. And that’s just in the United States.”
The CDCP has a video about the influence of movie smoking on teens called “Scene Smoking: Cigarettes, Cinema and the Myth of Cool.” It is available for view online or by DVD.

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Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Doctor Group Objects to Smoking in Movies for Kids

Posted on November 11, 2008 at 10:00 pm

USA Today has a story about smoking in movies:
A new study by the American Medical Association Alliance, the volunteer branch of the AMA, finds that over the past six years more than half of the movies geared toward children feature characters smoking. In more than a quarter of the movies, actors light up cigars.
The study’s own figures show that while the majority of PG and PG-13 films show characters smoking, it has decreased since 2007, when a stricter rating policy from the MPAA went into effect.
MPAA spokesman Seth Oster takes issue with the study. He says his organization’s own four-year analysis of 3,400 films found that of the 1,938 movies that featured smoking, 75% were rated R. In addition, he notes, the MPAA has added phrases such as “glamorizes smoking” and “pervasive smoking” in its ratings. “We have incorporated smoking as a factor on par with other issues like language, violence and sexual situations,” Oster says. “The motion picture industry takes very seriously the issue of smoking in films.”
The AMAA and American Lung Association would like an R rating for any film with smoking unless it is a biographical film or a movie addressing the dangers of tobacco.

Smoking in Movies

Posted on October 14, 2008 at 11:13 pm

davis stamp.jpg
Roger Ebert hates smoking — except in movies. And he really objects to the kind of revisionism that has produced one of Bette Davis’ iconic images from “All About Eve” for a new postage stamp but left out her ever-present cigarette.
Ebert’s parents died from smoking-related diseases. He does not permit smoking in his home. But he cannot resist the romanticism of cigarette smoking in movies, especially classic movies.
Two of the most wonderful props in film noir were cigarettes and hats. They added interest to a close up or a two-shot. “Casablanca” without cigarettes would seem to be standing around looking for something to do. These days men don’t smoke and don’t wear hats. When they lower their heads, their eyes aren’t shaded. Cinematographers have lost invaluable compositional tools. The coil of smoke rising around the face of a beautiful women added allure and mystery. Remember Marlene Dietrich. She was smoking when she said, “It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.”
Everybody smoked cigarettes in the movies. Even Katharine Hepburn. Even Loretta Young. Ronald Reagan posed for Chesterfield ads. On the radio, it wasn’t “The Jack Benny Program,” it was “The Lucky Strike Program with Jack Benny,” although in that PBS documentary you only see him smoking cigars. Robert Mitchum smoked so much, he told me, that when the camera was rolling on “Out of the Past,” Kirk Douglas offered him a pack and asked, “Cigarette?” And Mitchum, realizing he’d carried a cigarette into the scene, held up his fingers and replied, “Smoking.” His improvisation saved the take. They kept it in the movie.
My favorite smoking scene is Lauren Bacall’s first on-screen moment in “To Have and Have Not” — she was an instant star with her first line: “Anybody got a match?”

Ebert acknowledges that in today’s world it almost seems absurd to have a character smoking anywhere but standing outside a building on a brief break. Even James Bond no longer smokes. And we no longer need the lighting of a cigarette and the softly rising smoke to demonstrate gallantry and symbolize romance and seduction. in this era of overshares and TMI, perhaps it isn’t the cigarettes we miss so much as the metaphors.