Smoke Free Movies has launched a series of print advertisements in Variety and other publications. This advertisement first ran in Variety on July 30, 2008.

[One in a Series]

Each year, the film industry donates $4 billion to the tobacco industry. Not your idea of philanthropy?

(Image of teen)

By now, you know the issue. In large-scale studies on four continents, American movies remain the single biggest recruiter of new young smokers.

What’s on-screen promotion worth to the big tobacco companies?

More than $4 billion in lifetime sales revenue from each year’s recruits in the U.S. alone.*

Of the nearly 400,000 U.S. kids recruited to smoke by movies this year, 120,000 will eventually die from tobacco diseases. Heart disease, lung disease, cancer.

R-rating future smoking would avert half of those deaths: 60,000. How big a check would you need to write to spare 60,000 lives, year after year? That’s equivalent to ending all U.S. deaths from drunk driving, criminal violence, drug use and more forever, overnight.

Yet one of the most important public health advances in the last half-century won’t take a check. Just your professional courage. By committing to evidence-based policy solutions, with genuine accountability industry-wide, you can get smoking out of youth-rated movies, once and for all.

To comfort human suffering is honorable.

To eliminate suffering’s cause is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Smoke Free Movies www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu

* Net present value (npv). Source: Pediatrics, 2006.

Smoking in movies kills in real life. Smoke Free Movie policies — the R-rating, certification of no payoffs, anti-tobacco spots, and an end to brand display — are endorsed by the World Health Organization, American Medical Association, AMA Alliance, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, American Legacy Foundation, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, L.A. County Dept. of Health Services, New York State Dept. of Health, New York State PTA, and others. To explore this critical health issue, visit our web site or write: Smoke Free Movies, UCSF School of Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390.