January 31, 2016
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 millions of young people worldwide to start smoking, according to the new WHO Smoke-Free Movies Report – From evidence to action, the third edition since its launch in 2009.
“With ever tighter restrictions on tobacco advertising, film remains one of the last channels exposing millions of adolescents to smoking imagery without restrictions,” says Dr Douglas Bettcher, WHO’s Director for the Department of Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases.
Taking concrete steps, including rating films with tobacco scenes and displaying tobacco warnings before films with tobacco, can stop children around the world from being introduced to tobacco products and subsequent tobacco-related addiction, disability and death.
January 27, 2016
Eric Crosbie, Patricia Sosa, and I just published “Costa Rica’s implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control: Overcoming decades of industry dominance” in Salud Publica Mexico.
The tile says it all. This paper is an update of our earlier paper that showed that the tobacco companies understood that Costa Rica is a trendsetting country in Latin America and how they blocked effective tobacco control for years. Motivated by the FCTC and with assistance from the global tobacco control network the industry was overcome and strong legislation was passed.
(We have another paper coming out soon on the successful implementation.)
Here is the abstract in English:
January 26, 2016
James Wills and colleagues just published a very strong longitudinal study of the relationship between e-cigarette use among high school students who had never smoked a cigarette and their smoking status a year later.
They found that nonsmoking youth who used e-cigarettes were about 3 times more likely to be smoking conventional cigarettes than youth who did not use e-cigarettes.
The study controlled for a wide range of other factors in addition to e-cigarette use that could be leading to smoking: age, gender, ethnicity, parental education, parental support and rebelliousness. Accounting for these factors did not erase the e-cigarette effect.
Here is how the authors summed up their results:
January 25, 2016
The new CDC Tips campaign that just launched features a story from Kristy. A woman who tried to quit with ecigs and remained a dual user.
Kristy tried using electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) as a way to cut back on cigarette smoking, but she continued to smoke regular cigarettes. Her cough didn’t get better, and eventually, Kristy stopped using e-cigarettes and went back to smoking only regular cigarettes. A few months later, her right lung collapsed, which can be life threatening. She was rushed to the hospital. Kristy spent 2 weeks there on powerful pain medicine as doctors inserted chest tubes and performed surgery to repair her collapsed lung. Tests also showed that Kristy had the beginning stages of emphysema and COPD, lung diseases that make it harder and harder to breathe and have no cure. COPD stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Read her whole story and see the ad here.
January 19, 2016
• 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 percent of the nominated actors smoked.
• Five of the seven smoking roles (71%) in 2015 were based on actual historical people. Last year, only one of the five smoking roles was based on an actual person (American Sniper, R, Time Warner).
• Seven of the thirteen films with smoking had a biographical element, but in most of these films most of the smokers were invented minor characters or uncredited extras.
Conclusion
The growing number of films with biographical elements — but with invented characters smoking — is a trend to watch.