Alliance aims to snuff out movie smoking

A new grant will fund efforts to end tobacco use in films rated for kids.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Nov. 6, 2006.

The American Legacy Foundation handed the AMA Alliance last month a half-million-dollar check to finance efforts to get images of smoking out of films rated G, PG, and PG-13.

The foundation is an antismoking organization formed in 1999 as a result of the Master Settlement Agreement between state attorneys general and the tobacco industry.

Because of ever-increasing restrictions on tobacco advertising, movies have become one of the last entertainment vehicles in which children and teenagers can be exposed to pictures of smoking. Evidence suggests that many young people are strongly influenced by them.

"[Smoking] is one of the most serious threats to children's health. No parent wants to pay for movies that push smoking on their children," said Nita Maddox, president of the Alliance, a nonprofit health advocacy network of more than 25,000 spouses of physicians. She received the check at the organization's recent conference in Chicago.

The grant will go toward paying a staff person and for the distribution of "Screen Out! A Parent's Guide to Smoking, Movies and Children's Health," published by the Smokefree Movies Action Network.

"The key is to take it all in, digest it and then do something," said AMA President William G. Plested III, MD. The Association endorses the Screen Out! campaign and has long lobbied against tobacco use. The AMA also has policy encouraging R ratings for movies depicting tobacco use.