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It blows me away every time I see a great-looking movie actor smoking on the big screen. Filmmakers think that a cigarette in a star's hand develops a character, but I think it just develops more smokers. Kids who watch movies featuring smokers are 2-3 times more likely to begin smoking. One study noted that in 2009, 1,935 smoking incidents were found among the top 10 grossing films that year. This number is way down from the peak of 3,967 in 2005, but that's still a lot of movies with tobacco images (including those rated PG-13). If you want to prevent your kids from seeing their idols lighting up, you might want to suss out the smoking images in movies before taking the family to the theater.
Yes.
It used to be in all these movies they had people smoking and if you notice they are not really doing that now. I think that the glamorizing of smoking is gone from movies and you don't see advertisements for it. I think that it does increase smoking rates and that is why you don't see it very often in movies anymore. Smoking is not glamorous but only hurts your health.
Absolutely. Smoking rates go up after kids see cigarettes used in movies. Especially, this is actually race-related, with Hispanic kids and Caucasian kids being more sensitive to this glamorizing than African-American children. We should thank Disney for eliminating smoking in their movies - it is one of the effects of good contacts where the CEO, Toby Cosgrove, M.D., spoke to the CEO of Disney - Bob Iger, and after a persuasive argument, Bob Iger got Disney to ban smoking in its movies. I hope that is still true under different management.
Smoking in movies dramatically increases smoking especially among people under the age of 18.
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Important: This content reflects information from various individuals and organizations and may offer alternative or opposing points of view. It should not be used for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. As always, you should consult with your healthcare provider about your specific health needs.