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Smoke Free Movies has launched a series
of print advertisements in Variety and other publications.
This advertisement first ran on January 27, 2009.
The
National Cancer Institute (1) concluded:
Movies
with smoking cause kids to smoke
Having confirmed movies’ causal
role in recruiting a new generation of smokers, our
nation can score a major victory against tobacco and
protect countless lives.
Without taxpayers spending a cent, film studios and
their corporate parents can immediately adopt these
four reasonable policies, industry wide:
1 | Rate future tobacco imagery “R,”
except for depictions of tobacco’s dire health
consequences or portrayals of actual historical figures
who smoked;
2 | Stop displaying tobacco brands
on screen;
3 | Certify that nobody in the production and distribution
chain receives anything of value from a tobacco company,
its agents or fronts to include tobacco imagery in a
film; and
4 | Run proven anti-tobacco spots before
all films with tobacco imagery, in all distribution
channels.
A strong majority of U.S. adults (70%)
already favor R-rating future smoking and showing anti-tobacco
spots before any film with smoking (67%). Sixty-one
percent want tobacco brands off screen. (2)
The U.S. film and tobacco industries
have a long history of commercial collaboration. The
film industry must now act upon the scientific evidence
showing that U.S. films with smoking are a vector for
addiction, disease and death worldwide.
[Signed]
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Heart Association
American Legacy Foundation
American Lung Association
American Medical Association
AMA Alliance
Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights
American Public Health Association
Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
New York State Department of Health
New York State PTA
Smoke Free Movies
(1)
U.S. National Cancer Institute (2008). Monograph 19:
www.cancercontrol.cancer.gov/tcrb/monographs/19/index.html.
(2) Social Climate Survey of Tobacco Control (2007).
www.socialclimate.org/pdf/smoking-attitudes-movies.pdf.
Learn
more at www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu | UCSF Center for
Tobacco Control Research & Education |
