July 9, 2015
Kid-rated movies from four major studios — Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Warner Bros. — were 100 percent smokefree in the first half of 2015, a record number of companies.
Smoking was down, but not out, at the two other MPAA member studios, Fox and Sony.
Overall, 28 percent of G, PG and PG-13 films featured tobacco imagery January through June, 2015, compared to 38 percent in the same period the year before. The average number of tobacco incidents in youth-rated films dropped from 13 to 5.
In the past, companies have not sustained their smokefree performances for long, leading the CDC to observe that “individual movie company policies alone have not been efficient at minimizing smoking in movies.”
Seven of the ten kid-rated movies with smoking so far in 2015 came from independent film companies, not members of the MPAA. This further strengthens the case of the R-rating, which would apply to all movie companies.
If two-thirds of MPAA-member companies can act as if the R-rating is already in place, why not adopt the R-rating and protect kids permanently?
July 8, 2015
Mattlhew Farrelly and colleagues at RTI just published an excellent experimental study demonstrating that e-cigarette TV ads being run by blu, NJOY, and 21st Century e-cigarette companies move youth who have never used e-cigarettes toward taking them up. Here is the abstract of their paper, "A Randomized Trial of the Effect of E-cigarette TV Advertisements on Intentions to Use E-cigarettes," in American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
July 8, 2015
On June 29, 2015, The Walt Disney Company released its updated policy on smoking in youth-rated movies, promised by CEO Robert Iger at the company’s annual meeting.
At that March 12 meeting, a shareholder asked Mr. Iger if Disney would “commit to an iron-clad policy that your PG-13 and youth-rated movies never show smoking.” Mr. Iger responded:
Well, the answer to that is “yes.” I will commit to that. We are extending our policy to prohibit smoking across the board — Marvel, Lucas[film], Pixar, Disney films — except when we are depicting an historical figure who may have smoked at the time of his life.
The policy published ten weeks later by Disney represents a step forward, but is short of “iron-clad.” Importantly, after 2015, smoking will be barred from new G, PG and PG-13 films marketed under the Disney, Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar labels. This expands Disney’s 2005 smokefree pledge to cover studio units that Disney has acquired since then.
Where’s Touchstone?
But another longtime Disney film label, Touchstone, is missing from Disney’s 2015 list. And that’s noticeable.
June 25, 2015
The new site features easier searching, better display of results, and linkage to other industry document collections.
Check it out at https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/.
PS: Exiting links to documents using the old legacy.libraty.ucsf.edu still work.
June 24, 2015
Smokeless tobacco and, more recently, e-cigarettes have been promoted as a harm reduction strategy for smokers who are “unable or unwilling to quit.” The strategy, embraced by both industry and some public health advocates, is based on the assumption that as smoking declines overall, only those who cannot quit will remain. A new study by researchers at UC San Francisco has found just the opposite.
The researchers analyzed survey data spanning 18 years in the United States and six years in the European Union. They found that, contrary to the prevailing assumptions, as the fraction of the population that smoked declined, the remaining smokers actually smoked less and were more likely to quit than to stick with it. The authors said their findings challenge the need to promote new forms of nicotine delivery, such as e-cigarettes, since the smoking population continues to quit smoking as a result of proven policies and interventions.
The paper, titled, “The smoking population in the USA and the EU is softening not hardening,” appears online in the June 24, 2015 issue of the journal Tobacco Control.