No Stank You

Smoking in the Movies

Did you know that the vast majority of movies not only show smoking, but glamorize it?

Seeing celebrities smoke on the big screen can have a huge impact on viewers. Many teenagers start smoking because they see their favorite actors and actresses light up in movies.

In the last year, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the organization that rates films, announced that it may give a higher rating to films that glamorize smoking or feature pervasive smoking outside of a historic context. And Disney has announced that it will eliminate smoking in movies made by Walt Disney Studios, but it has not applied the same policy to its other studios, Miramax and Touchstone. While this represents progress, there are still too many G, PG and PG-13 movies that make smoking seem appealing.

Get the Smoking in the Movies Tool Kit, full of ideas and tools to take action.

Some very important facts:

• Exposure to smoking in movies has been linked to more than half of the teenagers who start smoking every year in the U.S.1
• The more exposure an adolescent has to smoking on the big screen, the more likely that person is to begin smoking.1
• Current movie heroes are three to four times more likely to smoke than people in real life.2, 3
• Smoking scenes in movies may have a greater influence on young people than tobacco advertising.4
• Tobacco companies know the power that movies and celebrities have in influencing young people to begin smoking.5
• Hollywood has a history of tobacco promotion. Tobacco companies agreed not to pay for product placement, yet the images of smoking and the display of specific brands of cigarettes continue to be common in movies.6
• Anti-tobacco advertising shown before a movie can counteract the positive messages about smoking in the movie.7
• Eighty percent of PG-13, movies and 50 percent of G and PG movies include smoking.8
• The amount of smoking in movies decreased between 1950 and 1982, but it has doubled since then. Now, smoking is as common in movies as it was in 1950.2

Sources

1. Dalton MA, Sargent JD, Beach ML et al. Effect of viewing smoking in movies on adolescent smoking initiation: A cohort study. Lancet 2003;362:281-5. Available from: http://image.thelancet.com/extras/03art1353web.pdf. Last accessed 1/27/06.

2. Charlesworth A, Glantz, SA. Smoking in the movies increases adolescent smoking: A review. Pediatrics 2005;116:1516-1528. Postprint available from: http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/1015. Last accessed 1/30/06.

3. Scene Smoking: Cigarettes, Cinema and the Myth of Cool. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/celebrities/SceneSmoking/CollegeGuide.htm. Last accessed 1/27/06.

4. Glantz SA. Smoking in movies: a major problem and a real solution. Lancet 2003;362:258-9. Available at: http://image.thelancet.com/extras/03cmt159web.pdf. Last accessed 1/30/06.

5. Mekemson C, Glantz SA. How the tobacco industry built its relationship with Hollywood. Tobacco Control 2002;11(suppl):i81-i91.

6. Smoke Free Movies: Brand Identification. http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/problem/brand_id.html. Last accessed 1/27/06.

7. Pechmann C, Shih C-F. Smoking scenes in movies and antismoking advertisements before movies: Effects on youth. Journal of Marketing 1999. 63:1-13.

8. Polansky JR, Glantz SA. First-run smoking presentations in US movies 1999-2003. Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. Tobacco Control Policy Making: United States. Paper Movies 2004. Available from: http://repositories.cdlib.org/ctcre/tcpmus/Movies2004/. Last accessed 1/30/06.

9. Mekemson, Curtis (2004) Hollywood speaks out on tobacco. Sacramento: Grassroots Solutions. http://cancer.about.com/od/lungcancer/a/famousdeathcan.htm; www.lalung.org; www.tobacco.org.