Campaign aims to snuff out on-screen tobacco use

The AMA and other health advocacy groups view the Screen Out! effort as a way to curb the number of young people who start smoking.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. Aug. 21, 2006.

Washington -- Every time movie stars -- especially Hollywood's young, hip and cool -- play characters that light up cigarettes on the silver screen, the risk becomes greater that teenagers and even younger children will emulate that behavior.

Studies, for instance, indicate that viewing tobacco use in movies persuades at least half of new, young smokers in the country to try it for themselves.

To turn this tide, several health advocacy groups, including the AMA, on July 13 launched Screen Out!, a campaign to eliminate smoking from youth-rated films. Given that tobacco is responsible for the deaths of 440,000 Americans annually and about 80% of smokers begin by age 18, the groups consider obstructing these images to be a public health imperative.

A project of the Smokefree Movies Action Network, Screen Out! is going after studios that allow tobacco use in their films. It is particularly targeting productions likely to be seen by young teens. About half of exposure to on-screen smoking occurs in R-rated films, according to recent research, but the other half occurs in movies rated G, PG and PG-13, which are ostensibly intended to attract young viewers. "The Chronicles of Narnia," the "Bad News Bears" and "Bee Season" are among the latter category.

The group wants parents to urge studios to eliminate smoking from films for children and young teens and to keep their children away from R-rated movies.

Smokefree Movies was started by Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and a long-time anti-smoking advocate. After years of trying to persuade studio heads to leave tobacco use on the cutting room floor, little progress has been made, said Dr. Glantz, who spoke at a briefing on the project during the 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health, held last month in Washington, D.C.