Back To News Releases
AMERICAN LEGACY FOUNDATION® STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO NEW STUDY INDICATING WHITE TEENS WITH HIGH EXPOSURE TO R-RATED MOVIES HAVE INCREASED RISK OF SMOKING INITIATION
3/9/2007
Statement by American Legacy Foundation
A new study published in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine is yet another independent evaluation of media’s effect on adolescent smoking. The study confirms what the preponderance of research has shown over the years: smoking on TV and in films is linked to youth smoking initiation.
While the researchers made a distinction for smoking initiation between White and Black adolescents, the message remains the same: exposure to smoking in movies and on TV is a major public health risk and more should be done to reduce youth’s exposure to this deadly on-screen behavior.
Legacy has worked closely with researchers at Dartmouth Medical School to evaluate smoking’s effect on adolescent smoking and found that nationally, youth with the highest exposure to smoking in movies were nearly three times as likely to start smoking, regardless of race or ethnicity. This new study, from the University of North Carolina, found a similar robust relationship with one exception: African American youth seem less responsive to media influences when it comes to smoking initiation as teens.
Many in the public health community have recognized smoking in the media to be more powerful than traditional tobacco advertising. According to researchers studying the effect of tobacco marketing in media, the portrayal of tobacco use on film may be more psychologically engaging than a cigarette ad, and may have a bigger impact on youth’s smoking attitudes and their intent to smoke. In addition, it is not hard for youth to see these types of images on TV and on film. Our studies have shown that tobacco is still depicted in three quarters of youth-rated (G, PG and PG-13) movies and 90% of R-rated movies.
While the results of the North Carolina study showed increased initiation with high exposure to R-rated films, we do know that smoking in youth-rated movies has a greater reach among adolescents because these movies are seen by three times as many youth as R-rated movies. For this reason, the American Legacy Foundation has joined public health groups around the country and the world to rate any movie with smoking R, among other policies designed to reduce youth exposure to smoking on film.
Along with the American Medical Association (AMA) Alliance, the foundation launched the Screen Out! Parent’s Guide to Smoking, Movies and Children’s Health, which provides families with the facts about movie smoking and the tools and strategies they need to make a difference on a national scale. The AMA Alliance is arming parents nationwide to urge the major Hollywood studios and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to:
1. Give an R rating to movies containing smoking images
2. End tobacco brand identification in movies
3. Require anti-smoking messages prior to any film with a tobacco presence
4. Certify no-payoffs for tobacco imagery on screen.
The bottom line is this: movie smoking recruits 390,000 youth a year to smoking and it is estimated that 120,000 of them with eventually suffer an untimely death from a tobacco-related disease. How many more studies will it take to show the influencers in Hollywood that they have the power to make a difference and save potentially hundreds of thousands of young lives?
The American Legacy Foundation® is dedicated to building a world where young people reject tobacco and anyone can quit. Located in Washington, D.C., the foundation develops programs that address the health effects of tobacco use, especially among vulnerable populations disproportionately affected by the toll of tobacco, through grants, technical assistance and training, partnerships, youth activism, and counter-marketing and grassroots marketing campaigns. The foundation’s programs include truth®, a national youth smoking prevention campaign that has been cited as contributing to significant declines in youth smoking; EXSM, an innovative public health program designed to speak to smokers in their own language and change the way they approach quitting; research initiatives exploring the causes, consequences and approaches to reducing tobacco use; and a nationally-renowned program of outreach to priority populations. The American Legacy Foundation was created as a result of the November 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) reached between attorneys general from 46 states, five U.S. territories and the tobacco industry. Visit http://www.americanlegacy.org/.
###
Contact: Julia Cartwright, (202) 454-5596, jcartwright@americanlegacy.org