WHO's release of its report Smoke-free movies: From evidence to action (3rd edition) on 1 February 2016 has been covered by media outlets from India to Ireland. A selection of news articles, including responses from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC):
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On 1 February, 2016 the World Health Organization released the following statement.
Films showing smoking scenes should be rated to protect children from tobacco addiction
The World Health Organization is calling on governments to rate movies that portray tobacco use in a bid to prevent children and adolescents from starting to smoke cigarettes and use other forms of tobacco.
Movies showing use of tobacco products have enticed...
• Of the twenty English-language, live-action, non-documentary films nominated in any Oscar category this year, thirteen (65%) included smoking: half of those rated PG-13 and 71 percent of those rated R.
• While 65 percent of Oscar-nominated films include smoking, only 35...
1 of 3 PG-13 movies are smokefree
The Martian, Simon Kinberg, Ridley Scott, Michael Schaefer and Mark Huffam (smokefree)
Bridge of Spies, Steven Spielberg, Marc Platt and Kristie Macosko Krieger (smoking)
Brooklyn, Finola Dwyer and Amanda Posey (smoking)
2 of 5 R movies are smokefree
Mad Max: Fury Road, Doug Mitchell and George Miller (smokefree)
Room, Ed Guiney (Smokefree...
After rebounding in recent years, 2015 tobacco counts fell across most of the film industry, in some cases approaching or exceeding 2010 lows. (See film list)
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Just before the holidays, Truth Initiative released an important report, Played: Smoking in Video Games, that highlights the fact that the movies are not the only entertainment medium that help sell tobacco to kids.
Here are the main conclusions:
• Tobacco use is prevalent in video games played by youth.
•...
The Wall Street Journal has reported that e-cigarette marketers — including Relativity honcho Ryan Kavanaugh — boast publicly about exploiting product placement in Hollywood movies.
That’s the opposite of Big Tobacco’s longtime habit of keeping smoking deals secret or at least deniable.
Has blatancy paid off? Or back-fired...
There is an important indication that the Government of India’s policies designed to get smoking out of movies are having an impact: On December 25, 2015, the Times of India reported that “Bollywood offers to make anti-tobacco short films to go with their movies.”
This means
(1) Bollywood recognizes that the policy is not going away
(2) They are highly motivated to keep the smoking in their movies, perhaps to keep the tobacco companies happy.
(3) We...
“A license to kill is also a license not to kill,” says James Bond’s new boss, the mysterious M, in Spectre (2015).
The film’s producers didn’t pay attention. Despite years of warnings from WHO and the CDC, tobacco shows up in the latest Bond film alongside a record twenty-three...
Hollywood's animated characters are smoking less — a lot less.
From 2002 to 2011, Breathe California's Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! data shows that 27 percent of top-grossing animated films featured tobacco. The top three in terms of audience exposure:
#1. Rango (PG, 2011, Viacom) with more than fifty tobacco incidents on screen, delivered 948 million domestic tobacco impressions.
#2. The...
