Tobacco.org

BRUCE: Power of the cinema is leading young people to smoke 

scientific evidence now indicates that movie studios are doing massive harm. While it's the tobacco industry whose products kill 439,000 Americans a year, it is exposure to smoking in Hollywood movies that generates 390,000 new teen smokers a year to replace them, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. . . .

Take, for example, "Avatar," rated PG-13. Nominated for nine Academy Awards, it is one of the biggest films this year. It's a fantasy that takes place in the year 2154 on a distant moon.

Sigourney Weaver plays a scientist/ecologist who smokes. The smoking is completely without context or excuse. (How many scientists would smoke today, let alone in 2154?)

Studies controlling for every other conceivable factor find that kids 10 to 14 who see the most movies with smoking are three times as likely to start smoking as kids who see the least. . . .

But you don't need to take the word of independent researchers publishing in the world's most respected medical journals. Read tobacco industry files dating back to 1971. They describe how tobacco companies set out to systematically boost their products in major motion pictures. They figured out that they didn't even have to flash a particular brand. They beleived that seeing any kind of smoking in movies would keep it "fashionable," according to a study by the University of California, San Francisco's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education.

To put tobacco on screen, the companies invested millions in product placement until at least the early 1990s, when the paper trail disappears offshore. . . .

The R-rating alone would cut teen exposure to movie smoking in half and in the decades to come avert as many as 60,000 tobacco deaths a year -- more U.S. deaths than than are caused by car crashes and drug use combined.

The six top media CEOs can pick up their phones and make it happen today. Why not? Nobel prizes have been won for less!

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