American Medical Association Alliance Targets Cigarettes in Popular Movies
Jump to full article: New York Times, 2009-05-28
Author: BROOKS BARNES
Intro: The advocacy arm of the American Medical Association unveiled a summer-long campaign on Wednesday intended to publicly shame movie studios for depicting images of smoking in their mass-appeal movies.
"Which Movie Studios Will Cause the Most Youth to Start Smoking This Summer?" is the name of the effort. Components include a Facebook scorecard, moviesmokingscorecard.com, tallying the number of tobacco images depicted in movies rated G, PG and PG-13 from May to August. The studio found to be the biggest offender will be named on billboards in September.
The American Medical Association Alliance, working with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and the California Youth Advocacy Network, will also operate the public Facebook page. The site already includes a video from a group of teenagers complaining about images of smoking in "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."
"It's incomprehensible for studios to defend their promotion of tobacco products in youth-rated films when you hear from teenagers directly that they are taking notice -- and offense -- to this on-screen promotion," said Sandi Frost, president of the American Medical Association Alliance.
Visitors to the Facebook page will also be encouraged to sign a petition demanding that "gratuitous images of smoking" earn a film an automatic R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America.
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