Movies (and TV) promote smoking, even accounting for exposure to other kinds of tobacco promotion

In collaboration with colleagues at the CDC Office on Smoking and Health and at UCSF, we just published “Protobacco Media Exposure and Youth Susceptibility to Smoking Cigarettes, Cigarette Experimentation, and Current Tobacco Use among US Youth,” in PLoS ONE.  This paper uses data from the 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey to concurrently examine the effects of a wide range of media influences, including movies and TV, on youth smoking.
 
We founds that youth susceptibility to smoking, experimentation, and current use varies by type of protobacco media channel exposure. Susceptibility and experimentation are associated with exposure to static tobacco advertising, with experimentation being mediated by perceptions of peer tobacco use. Current tobacco use is also associated with static advertising through increasing perceptions of peer tobacco use. In addition, current tobacco use is associated with both exposure to  static advertisements through perception of peer tobacco use of tobacco products, and by exposure to tobacco use in TV and movies, both directly and through perception of peer tobacco use.
 
Exposure to onscreen tobacco images in TV and movies increase youth tobacco use in dose-response fashion. Estimates that fail to adequately account for indirect effects of static ad exposure and exposure to tobacco use depicted in TV and movies through perceived peer smoking may underestimate the total effects of protobacco media. Consistent with earlier research, this study finds that the effects of exposure to onscreen smoking depicted in TV and movies and the effects of exposure to static advertising are both critical to consider in youth tobacco use. The results underscore the importance of efforts to reduce youth tobacco exposure in TV and movies, and through static advertising.
 
The paper is available for free here.
 
This item is cross-based at the Smoke Free Movies blog at http://smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/blog/movies-and-tv-promote-smoking-even-...