European Movie Rating Practices Result in Higher Exposure of Youth to Onscreen Smoking than in USA

Reiner Hanewinkel and colleagues recently published a comparison of the presence of smoking in youth-rated films in Europe with the ratings of the same films in the USA.  Because the European film rating authorities are more tolerant of adult language (the f word) and sex than the MPAA is in the USA, many films rated R in the US get youth ratings in Europe.  Because R rated movies in the US tend to be smoky, the result of these different rating practices is that 85% of movies with smoking were youth-rated in Europe compared to 59% of the same films in the US.  

This result is comparable to what we concluded in a study comparing the effects of rating practices in the UK vs the US and that Jonathan Polansky found in a study published for Physicians for a Smokefree Canada found in Canada.

This increase in exposure is important, because there is a dose-response relationship between the level of exposure to onscreen smoking and the likelihood that youth will smoke.