The movie industry should take smoking in films as seriously as they take profanity while giving the film an "A" or "R" rating, according to Norris Cotton Cancer Center researchers.
The Censor Board is often the biggest hurdle movies face before they are released. According to the Norris Cotton Cancer Center researchers, if the censor board takes smoking in films as seriously as it takes profanity while giving out ratings, the board can contribute immensely to cutting down on teen smoking.
"Smoking is a killer. Its connection to cancer, heart attacks, and chronic lung disease is beyond doubt. Kids start to smoke before they're old enough to think about the risks; after starting they rapidly become addicted and then regret it. Hollywood plays a role by making smoking look really good," researcher James Sargent said in a press statement. "By eliminating smoking in movies marketed to youth, an R rating for smoking would dramatically reduce exposure and lower adolescent smoking by as much as one-fifth.
For the study, researchers enrolled a total of 6,522 Americans. They then estimated how much a movie influenced a person's smoking habits by showing them 532 recent hit movies, categorized into three rating brackets used by the Motion Picture Association of America to rate films by content -- G/PG, PG-13, and R.
Researchers found that teen smoking can be cut down by 18 percent if smoking is completely eliminated for all PG-13 films because Movie smoking exposure (MSE) was three times greater in PG-13 films than in R rated films.
"We're just asking the movie industry to take smoking as seriously as they take profanity when applying the R rating," the author concluded. "The benefit to society in terms of reduced healthcare costs and higher quality of life is almost incalculable."
According to statistics from teenhelp.com, more than 90 percent of Americans who smoke as adults start smoking in their teens. Additionally, 6,000 children under the age of 18 start smoking every day in the United States, among which nearly half continue smoking as adults.
FDA's Center for Tobacco Products recently released a statement revealing 76.3 percent of middle and high school students who used e-cigarettes within the past 30 days also smoked conventional cigarettes in the same period. The percentage of U.S. middle and high school students who use electronic cigarettes or e-cigarettes has more than doubled from 2011 to 2012.
