The impact of smoking in movies, as seen by teens

By LauraLee Brown

Your soda and popcorn are empty and the end credits are running on the newest blockbuster to hit theaters. What is on your mind when you leave the movies? Is it the number of times the actors lit up cigarettes during the two-hour flick?

While you probably didn't consciously notice all the smoke, the fact is that there were teenagers watching the movie that may now take up the habit because of what they saw on the screen.

More and more, smoking in movies is being identified as a leading cause of teen smoking. Many filmmakers are using smoking in movies to make actors look more desirable or rebellious. This incorrect use of tobacco products is putting the wrong image in the minds of impressionable teenagers - my peers.

For the past decade, the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails, through its Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! and STARS projects, asked teenagers to view movies and rate them based on their tobacco content. We were asked to critique the smoking content as being truthful or glamorized. Our judging criteria were based on the extent of the tobacco use, the use by actors in the film, the perceived message of the smoking, and where people were smoking.

Using this criteria, we gave point totals to the movies and they were then rated on a scale by lung color on the Web site www.scenesmoking.org. Pink was the color for no smoking, light and dark gray were in the middle ranges, and black was the color for the highest amount of smoking in a movie. On the current list, one movie with high smoking content is "Holes." During this movie there is smoking around children. It's rated PG, which means that any pre-teen or teenager can get into the movie. What's more, it's a movie that is geared toward me and my friends.

It is movies like this that are causing many questions to come up about movie ratings. Is smoking appropriate for teens under the age of 18? If they aren't allowed to smoke, then why should they be allowed to go to a theater and see smoking on screen?

The American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails is participating in a campaign to have tobacco use included in the criteria for the MPAA movie ratings. If a movie that is full of tobacco smoke is given an R rating instead of a PG-13, movie theaters aren't supposed to let teens into those movies. Moviemakers are already cutting out violence, sex, nudity, drug use and profanity in order to receive a lower rating than R to make sure the important teen audience can get in. Adding smoking to the list isn't much of a stretch.

Studies have shown that this move would be wise. A recent study conducted by Dartmouth University and published in the Lancet Journal found that teens are three times more likely to begin smoking after viewing movies that include smoking content. In 1999, researchers asked children between the ages of 10 and 14 about different habits, including smoking and movie watching. Two years later they surveyed 2,600 of the original 3,500 who had never smoked and found that about 10 percent had tried smoking. The study, from the Dartmouth Medical School online news, showed that smoking in movies was the top reason to push children to try smoking. The children exposed to the most smoking in movies were two and a half times more likely to begin smoking than children with less exposure were. Information from the study linked this increase to the amount of smoking in movies.

"Here's more evidence that movies have a strong impact on adolescents," said Madeline Dalton, an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School. "Previous studies suggested that smoking in movies influences adolescent smoking behavior, but this is the first study to show that viewing smoking in movies predicts who will start smoking in the future."

This is real evidence that smoking among teens is on the rise and could be prevented. I am disgusted with the amount of smoking in movies and the way it is portrayed. It is not appealing to see an actor light up in every movie I watch. Smoking is not cool, not sexy and not portrayed realistically in movies. Now I have less respect for actors when I see them smoking because of the glamorized image the tobacco industry has created.

Participating in this project has provided an eye-opening experience for me. It has made me realize how many actors really smoke in movies and how much it can influence the way teenagers think. I feel that the tobacco industry should look at what they are doing to society and get rid of these unnecessary ways of promoting smoking. Each year smoking is the leading cause of unnecessary deaths in the United States. If we change the way smoking is portrayed in movies, we can prevent many people from smoking and save lives in the process.

LauraLee Brown is a junior at Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks, Calif.