FOR RELEASE: Monday, March 8, 2004
CONTACT: Meg Williams, 353-4306

Young people, pediatricians, anti-tobacco programs nationwide launch campaign to slash billions of kid tobacco impressions delivered by Hollywood studios

Increasing pressure on Hollywood to rate future smoking movies “R,” a broad multi-state coalition today launched a national campaign with survey results showing Hollywood’s kid-rated movies made 15.8 billion potentially lethal tobacco impressions on U.S. movie audiences since 1999. Locally, the Tobacco Free Amarillo coalition voiced support for the campaign.

Teenage moviegoers experienced 6.5 billion tobacco impressions, almost half in movies rated G, PG and PG-13. Children 6-11 encountered Big Screen tobacco incidents 1.7 billion times over the five years, more than half of them in movies rated PG-13.

“Movies with smoking are the number one health threat to American children,” said Meg Williams, director of Tobacco Free Amarillo. “An R-rating on tobacco use would cut the problem in half and save more lives than we now lose to criminal violence, drunk driving and HIV/AIDS combined.”

Released simultaneously by public health advocates and other concerned groups across the United States, a survey of 776 U.S. movies released between 1999 and the end of 2003 for the first time ties on-screen tobacco content and the tobacco impressions they generate to specific Hollywood studios. The report notes that Time Warner (Warner Bros, New Line, etc.) accounts for a quarter of all tobacco impressions on teen moviegoers, that 88% of Disney’s PG-13 movies include smoking, and that Sony (Columbia, Revolution, etc.) consistently ranks among the top three cinematic promoters of teen smoking.

“Almost 90% of studios’ R-rated movies, 80% of their PG-13 movies, and 50% of G and PG-rated movies included smoking in the last five years,” said survey co-author Stanton Glantz, PhD, director of the University of California-San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. “At least half of all the tobacco impressions made by movies in theaters come from youth-rated films. And that doesn’t even count what happens on video."

Published research indicates that exposure to Hollywood’s smoking movies recruits more than half of all new young smokers. Health advocates are pushing major studios to keep tobacco out of their kid-rated movies and to give future smoking an “R.” Because their movie divisions are responsible for more than half of on-screen smoking, the CEOs of Time Warner, Disney and Sony will be targeted with letters and faxes from tens of thousands of people in the next month.

“New teen smokers continue to replace adults who quit,” said James K. Luce, M.D., volunteer with Tobacco Free Amarillo. “In fact, they just about fill in Texas’ smokers who die. We know that Hollywood movies are at least half the reason. The single smartest thing any parent can do is to help get smoking out of kid-rated movies.”

An R-rating for on-screen smoking is endorsed by leading health organizations including the American Medical Association, WHO, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.