Should movies with smoking be rated 18A?

3 Comments

  • Jonathan Polansky - 9 years ago

    Good questions, Brayden. As a recent high school graduate, you know you can easily use Google to discover what the US Surgeon General, US CDC, Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, and WHO have found about youth exposure to movie smoking and its health effects.

    Lucky for you, the University of California, San Francisco, has assembled these references all in one place:

    http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/godeeper/the_science.html

    In you browser you can search this long bibliography page using terms like "Surgeon General" or "Centers
    for Disease Control" or "Ontario."

    Three of my favorite peer-reviewed articles trace the commercial collaboration between the US film and tobacco industries from the late 1920s until at least the mid-1990s (full disclosure: I co-authored one of them):

    Lum KL, Polansky JR, Jackler RK, Glantz SA (2008) Signed, sealed and delivered: Big Tobacco in Hollywood, 1927-1951. Tobacco Control 17: 313-323. (http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/pdf/SignedSealed.pdf)

    Lambert A, Sargent J, et al. (2004) How Philip Morris unlocked the Japanese cigarette market: lessons for global tobacco control. Tobacco Control 13: 400-402. (http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/pdf/Lambert-Japan.pdf)

    Mekemson C, Glantz S (2002) How the tobacco industry built its relationship with Hollywood. Tobacco Control 11:i81-i91. (http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/pdf/MekemsonMovies.pdf)

  • Brayden - 9 years ago

    Please cite where the CDC have "concluded" this "fact". The original article from Ontario claimed that the number of movie-goers who saw tobacco use in theatres was proportional on-screen tobacco appearances! This is an obvious fact.

    The article went on with claims of staggeringly high numbers of youth who began smoking because of watching these movies. This is highly illogical - to obtain this data, organizations would either have to survey youth that have picked up smoking, or see a direct correlation between youth smokers and tobacco screen time.

    Neither were presented in the article. There were no links to any studies or surveys that found or supported this.

    As a recent high school graduate, I can almost guarantee that movies/media had no effect whatsoever on those who picked up the habit. Everyone who did smoke, picked it up from their friends or family members.

    it's also illegal in many places for the tobacco industry to advertise / lobby the media to include tobacco scenes. While I agree this is wrong, I don't believe it's the reason for most tobacco on TV.

    So let's go ahead and impose censorship on our media based on empty claims in hopes that it will slow down youth smoking. I highly doubt any noticeable difference would be found in doing so. Tobacco use is prevalent in our daily lives; many of us see and smell it every day.

    Don't get me wrong; it's disgusting and unhealthy, but a lack of tobacco in media would be a false representation of reality.

  • Jonathan Polansky - 9 years ago

    The US film and tobacco industries were in each other's pockets for decades, paying off producers, stars and studios to show smoking and promote tobacco brands. Given this history, this rating proposal is a reasonable, non-intrusive, forward-looking solution.

    The actual rating backed by public health experts in Canada, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and health experts around the world would:

    • R/18-rate FUTURE movies with smoking — it would not be retroactive
    • Allow categorical exceptions for:
    • Portrayals of smoking by actual, historical characters who actually used tobacco (as in biographical dramas and documentaries)
    • Depictions of the actual health consequences of tobacco use

    Filmmakers will be able to include smoking in any films they want, as long as they accept the R/18 rating. Today, film producers and directors routinely calibrate on-screen content to receive the rating they want for marketing purposes (whether PG or 18). The rating is part of the movie's business plan. Indeed, studio contracts with production companies often stipulate the rating that the finished film must aim for.

    The R/18 rating for tobacco imagery need not mean there will be more movies rated R or 18. Producers can choose to reserve smoking for their R/18 movies, just as they now reserve other content. Film ratings don’t keep any adult from seeing anything they want on a movie screen.

    Nobody proposes to ban smoking from movies. In the US market, R-rated movies make up one-third of top-grossing films — and some youth see them, of course. Realistically, the R/18 rating would cut youth exposure to on-screen smoking by 50-60 percent. Even so, this balanced measure will save countless lives worldwide.

    The US CDC has concluded that an R-rating in the US would cut youth smoking by nearly 20 percent and avert 1 million tobacco deaths in the generation of children and teens alive today. On a population basis, Canada could avert at least 100,000 deaths from tobacco-induced cancer, stroke, lung disease and heart disease.

    The major film studios are well aware of the tobacco hazard. They run the rating system in the US and appear deadlocked about what to do. Hollywood's key export countries can push the $30 billion global film industry to do the right thing and the smart thing: stop serving the $100 billion tobacco industry's marketing interests. To protect their own populations, Canada and the many other nations that have signed the global Framework Convention on Tobacco Control need to send Hollywood a strong signal.

    More than a decade of research, involving thousands of young people in a dozen countries, has established the physical harm caused to young audiences by their exposure to smoking on screen. But you don't have to believe the peer-reviewed results. Just look at the documentary evidence of eight decades of tobacco payoffs in the film industry. The multinational tobacco companies, whose products kill half their customers, have known all along that movies sell smoking — and invested millions to make it happen.

    Green light the movie. Red light the smoking.

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