Smoke Free Movies has launched a series of print advertisements in Variety and other publications. This advertisement first ran on Jan. 27, 2009.
The National Cancer Institute1 concluded:
Movies with smoking cause kids to smoke
Having confirmed movies' causal role in recruiting a new generation of smokers, our nation can score a major victory against tobacco and protect countless lives.
Without taxpayers spending a cent, film studios and their corporate parents can immediately adopt these four reasonable policies, industry wide:
1. Rate future tobacco imagery "R," except for depictions of tobacco's dire health consequences or portrayals of actual historical figures who smoked;
2. Stop displaying tobacco brands on screen;
3. Certify that nobody in the production and distribution chain receives anything of value from a tobacco company, its agents or fronts to include tobacco imagery in a film; and
4. Run proven anti-tobacco spots before all films with tobacco imagery, in all distribution channels.
A strong majority of U.S. adults (70%) already favor R-rating future smoking and showing anti-tobacco spots before any film with smoking (67%). Sixty-one percent want tobacco brands off screen.2
The U.S. film and tobacco industries have a long history of commercial collaboration. The film industry must now act upon the scientific evidence showing that U.S. films with smoking are a vector for addiction, disease and death worldwide.
Signed by:
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Heart Association
American Legacy Foundation
American Lung Association
American Medical Association
AMA Alliance
Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights
American Public Health Association
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
New York State Department of Health
New York State PTA
Smoke Free Movies
1 U.S. National Cancer Institute (2008). Monograph 19:
www.cancercontrol.cancer.gov/tcrb/monographs/19/index.html.
2 Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control (2007).
www.socialclimate.org/pdf/smoking-attitudes-movies.pdf.
Learn more at www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu
UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research & Education