Tobacco.org

• As Movies Portray Fewer Smokers, Are Fewer Real-Life Teens Lighting Up?  

Blockbuster movies are less likely to portray smokers than they have in the past, according to a new study. What’s more, this decline in on-screen smoking may have occurred in tandem with a drop in the number of adolescents who have lit up in real life.

While the study can’t prove that one is related to the other, the findings would seem to support what critics have long said: Smoking by glamorous (or even not-so-glamorous) people on the silver screen is like free advertising for cigarettes. . . .

“Reducing smoking in movies probably helped to reduce rates of smoking in kids,“ says study author James D. Sargent, MD, a professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School and the codirector of the Cancer Control Research Program at Norris Cotton Cancer Center, both in Lebanon, N.H. “We are on the right track aiming at movies, yet half of movies still contain smoking and more work needs to be done.” . . .

If you want to know what movies do or do not portray smoking, check out this list of films (including current releases and DVDs) provided by Smoke Free Movies.

Jump to full article »