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Smoking in movies still a hazard, CDC says

Nearly half of the top-grossing films from 2009 contained depictions of tobacco use, following an unsteady decline from the early 1990s, according to a report Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The figures come two years after the National Cancer Institute warned that kids greatly exposed to onscreen smoking are two to three times more likely to start smoking than youths with lighter exposure.

The study analyzed the number of incidents of tobacco use in the highest-grossing films from 1991 to 2009. During this period, the number of incidents peaked in 2005, but has since progressively declined. The trend may be linked with a significant decrease in high school students who had ever tried a cigarette. However, the decline is not enough given the “strong scientific base that smoking onscreen causes kids to smoke," said lead author of the study, Dr. Stanton Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco. Today tobacco use remains the cause of one out of five deaths in the U.S., and approximately 1,000 youths daily become cigarette smokers.

The recommendations of the CDC include assigning an R-rating to films that depict tobacco imagery, anti-tobacco adds preceding films that contain onscreen tobacco use, and prohibiting tobacco brand placements in films. In 2009, the mega-blockbuster film "Avatar" (whose leading actress Sigourney Weaver portrays a cigarette-smoking environmentalist) helped account for the more than 17 billion times a tobacco incident was viewed by a movie-audience member nationwide that year, according to the study. The banning of smoking in films rated PG-13 as urged by the CDC would create an economic disincentive for producers, Glatz says, and would help prevent the tobacco imagery of such films from reaching youths in theaters.

"That’s a very strong statement from a federal bureaucracy,” said Glantz in a phone call Thursday. “This is the first time that the CDC or any other government agency has said this is a problem that simply needs to be solved now.”

This study was funded in part by the American Legacy Foundation and the California Tobacco Control Program, although they played no role conducting the research or preparing the report, according to the CDC.

Post by: Trisha Pasricha - CNN Medical News Intern

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"We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
However, only one of those ways would the story have been told according to the designs of its architect.

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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"We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

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We also tell them where to worship, and which gods, and how. We're in their churches, too, it seems. Even in their community centers.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by Kwicko:

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"We tell them what to do, what to think, don't run, don't walk. We're in their homes and in their heads and we haven't the right. We're meddlesome."

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We also tell them where to worship, and which gods, and how. We're in their churches, too, it seems. Even in their community centers.

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Yeah, you'd be perfectly ok with anyone who wants to dig up Arlington National Cemetery, and build a place of worship, if they said they wanted to " build bridges of understanding " or some such nonsense.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

I think the CDC, using a study funded by people with an agenda, is going to bring great weight to bear on this issue. This has happened before with other government institutions, as I have already mentioned. I think if this meets with success, we will see other agenda-driven studies and conclusions used to suggest restrictions to the art.

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