For the fifth year running, the number of times that smoking is depicted onscreen in kids’ top-grossing movies has fallen, say the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Figures for 2005 to 2010 in the 15 July issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) show that the number of “onscreen tobacco incidents” in youth-rated (G, PG, and PG-13) movies has followed a downward trend from 2,093 incidents in 2005 to 595 in 2010, a decrease of 71.6%.
There is a similar downward pattern in number of incidents per movie, say the agency. This has fallen by 66.2% from 20.1 incidents per youth-rated film in 2005 to 6.8 incidents per film in 2010.
But the CDC say the rate of decline varies considerably among movie companies. And this could be linked to the fact some of them have published policies that say they are aiming to reduce use of tobacco in their movies.
“Policies designed to reduce onscreen tobacco use can substantially reduce tobacco incidents in youth-rated movies,” say the CDC.
Three of the companies that have published policies saying they are reducing onscreen tobacco use had an average decrease in incidents of tobacco use on-screen of 95.8% in the last 5 years up to 2010, compared to an average decrease of only 41.7% among those without policies.
According to the National Cancer Institute, there is scientific evidence that seeing people smoke in movies causes kids to start smoking.
Teenagers with the highest amount of exposure to smoking onscreen are twice as likely to take up smoking as those with the least, note the CDC.
The CDC’s figures come from statistics published by the group Breathe California (Sacbreathe.org) in their project Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down!
In that project, young people aged form 14 to 22 are recruited and trained to review the top 10 current box office movies. They use a standardized form for analyzing tobacco content onscreen. They record the amount and type of tobacco use, who is using it, and any perceived messages that tobacco use is sending.
They publish their results on www.SceneSmoking.org every Wednesday.
“Smoking in Top-Grossing Movies – United States, 2010 .”
Sources: CDC, Breathe California.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD