The Silver Screen

Have you noticed the increase lately of gratuitous tobacco use in movies?  I did a little surfing, and found a website called http://www.scenesmoking.org/ whose mission is to show the impact of smoking & tobacco references in entertainment. Some interesting statistics from their website:

• Every day, more than 2,000 adolescents in the US start smoking
• More than half of them start as a direct result of exposure to smoking in movies
• 80% of movies rated PG-13 - movies specifically targeted at teens - contain images of tobacco use
• Of the more than 1,000 teens each day who start smoking because of what they saw on screen, 340 will die early from smoking-related disease.

Reviewing previously secret tobacco advertising documents, the British Medical Journal concluded:
"The tobacco industry recruits new smokers by associating its products with fun, excitement, sex, wealth, and power and as a means of expressing rebellion and independence. One of the ways it has found to promote these associations has been to encourage smoking in entertainment productions. Exposure to smoking in entertainment media is associated with increased smoking and favourable attitudes towards tobacco use among adolescents."

The tobacco companies have a name for children:  replacement smokers.