New paper: Government Inaction on Ratings and Government Subsidies to the US Film Industry Help Promote Youth Smoking

Government Inaction on Ratings and Government Subsidies to the US Film Industry Help Promote Youth Smoking

by Chris Millett, Jonothan Polansky, Stanton Glantz was published earlier this week in PLoS Medicine at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001077

Here is the editors’ summary:

• Exposure to tobacco imagery in movies is a potent cause of youth experimentation and progression to established smoking.
• The World Health Organization and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, among others, recommend that all future movies with scenes of smoking (and other tobacco) be given an adult content rating.
• This recommendation has not yet been widely implemented. Even more problematic, many governments provide generous subsidies to the US film industry to produce youth-rated films that contain smoking and as such indirectly promote youth smoking.
• Between one-half and two-thirds of US-produced films that are youth-rated and government-subsidized in Britain, Canada, or the US contain smoking.
• Government subsidies for top-grossing films with smoking rival or surpass public spending on tobacco prevention campaigns in Britain and more than a dozen US states.
• Governments should ensure that film subsidy programmes are harmonised with public health goals by making films with tobacco imagery ineligible for public subsidies.

Press coverage at  http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/24/BALI1KQR9G.DTL