Lawmakers Urge Smoking-Related Film Rating

Industry Resists Calls to Use Ratings to Minimize Kids' Viewing of Cigarettes in Movies

By Todd Zwillich
WebMD Health News

May 11, 2004 -- Lawmakers called on the film industry to use its rating system to warn parents of depictions of smoking in movies, amid growing evidence that the portrayals make children an adolescents more likely to smoke.

Lawmakers say that they will not consider banning smoking in films frequented by young people, citing First Amendment concerns. But republicans and democrats, backed by health experts, are leaning on movie makers to do more to combat the portrayals and to make sure that movie studios and producers are not making product-placement deals with tobacco companies.

"We're calling for personal restraint. We're calling for personal responsibility," says Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a member of the U.S. Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.

A 2003 study of 600 popular films showed smoking was portrayed in 85% of them, including in about half of G-rated films.

The study also showed that adolescents who viewed the most smoking portrayals in movies were 2.7 times more likely to try smoking than those who viewed the least amount of smoking. The finding held even when researchers factored out other influences such as age, sex, personality characteristics, or whether the child's parents smoke, says Madeline A. Dalton, PhD, a pediatrics researcher at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H.

"We conclude that eliminating or reducing adolescents' exposure to smoking in movies could significantly reduce the number of adolescents who initiate smoking," Dalton told lawmakers.

Ensign and other lawmakers called on movie industry representatives to use their familiar rating system to alert parents when smoking is included in a film. Some activists want films containing smoking to carry an "R" rating that restricts viewing to kids 17 and older.

"It would cost nothing and it would not represent anyone's infringing on anything," says Stan Glantz, MD, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an antitobacco activist.

Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, resists the calls. Valenti tells lawmakers that curbing smoking could hamper directors' freedom of artistic expression, though he does support more education to influence directors to avoid "gratuitous" depictions of smoking, he says.

Valenti, who invented the movie rating system in response to concerns over foul language and other content in the late 1960s, says that changing the system to warn of smoking would invite calls to alter it further for portrayals of drinking, drug use, and even other damaging behaviors such as overeating.

"I cannot tell you how many people want to be recognized in the ratings system. We want to make sure this rating system doesn't get cluttered up," he says.

Meanwhile, activists charge that paid placements of brand-name cigarette products in films continue, despite a prohibition in the 1996 state tobacco settlement. Glantz urged movie studios to certify at the end of their films that no money was paid to install cigarette brands in the movie.

Valenti says that he doesn't have "one jot" of evidence that the product placements still occur.

But Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that companies still are not complying with the agreement's bans on cigarette advertising to children. "If it was a piece of cheese, it would have a lot of holes in it," he says.

Wyden suggested that movie studios should think about curbing smoking in films, either with ratings changes or self-imposed bans. "After people think about it, there ought to be some consequences for it as well," he says.

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