DID YOU KNOW?

Youth who view a high level of smoking in movies are 2.5 times more likely to start smoking.

The Hollywood Problem

Smoking certainly isn’t history, but we’re making progress. Teenagers are fighting hard to spread the word about the dangers of smoking and tobacco use; tobacco companies are having to worker harder every year to replace each smoker who quits or dies; and tobacco control programs across the country are doing their part as well:

Increasing the excise tax on cigarettes
Implementing effective new counter marketing campaigns
Passing and enacting clean indoor air laws
Helping individuals quit tobacco use

But there’s one industry that big tobacco still owns. And it just happens to be one of the most popular pastimes of teenagers—the Hollywood film industry.

Normalizing tobacco use

Smoking is common in movies, fueling the misperception that smoking is more common than it actually is. (1)
75% of the 1,261 Hollywood and independent movies surveyed between 1999 and 2006 included tobacco—including 75% of PG-13 films and 36% of G/PG movies. (2)
From 1990 to 2005, at least 148 U.S. movies have displayed tobacco brands (and 75% of the time the brand belonged to Philip Morris). (3)
71% of the top 50 movies from 1994-2005 reviewed by Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down contained tobacco incidents, with an average of 10.5 incidents per hour. (4)

Glamorizing tobacco use

Tobacco use and smoking is often utilized as a superficial device to make characters seem “cool”, “bad”, or “reckless.”

But there’s also good news

Grass-roots organizations like New York State’s Reality Check—a youth-led anti-tobacco group—have started to fight back hard. Reality Check is calling on Hollywood to eliminate smoking in youth movies and attempting to educate community members and key opinion leaders about the impact of smoking in movies.

And in July of 2007, Disney became the first major Hollywood studio to ban depictions of smoking, saying there would be NO SMOKING in its family-oriented, Disney-branded movies. And it will “discourage” tobacco use in its Touchstone and Miramax movies. The studio will also place anti-smoking ads on DVDs that depict smoking.

references | updated: 08.30.2007

references

Scene Smoking. Retrieved September 14, 2007 from http://scenesmoking.org/frame.htm.
Glantz, S., Studio Survey 1999-2006. Retrieved September 14, 2007 from http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/problem/studio_surveys.html.
Smoke Free Movies: Brand Identification. Retrieved September 14, 2007 from http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/problem/brand_id.html.
Eleven Year Trend Analysis Report. The 2004-2005 Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! Analysis of Tobacco Use in Movies By the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant-Trails. Retrieved September 14, 2007 from http://scenesmoking.org/frame.htm.

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