Nearly 40 percent of adolescents
who give cigarette smoking a try do so because they saw
it in movies according to a new study.
The study, described as the first national look at the
influence of movie smoking on youths, urged Hollywood
to cut back on depictions of smoking or shots of cigarette
brands.
The industry also should consider adding a mention of
smoking to movie rating data that now mention explicit
sex, violence and profanity, it said.
Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School asked 6,522 children
aged 10 to 14 to identify films they had seen from a list
of 50 randomly selected box office hits released in the
United States from 1998 to 2000.
Even after considering other factors known to influence
smoking, the study found that adolescents with the highest
exposure to movie smoking were 2.6 times more likely to
try it compared to those with the lowest exposure.
Of every 100 adolescents who tried smoking, 38 did so
because they saw smoking portrayed in movies, said the
report published in the November issue of "Pediatrics,"
the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
In the entire sample, about 10 percent had tried smoking,
according to the study paid for by the National
Cancer Institute.
"Part of the reason that exposure to movie smoking has
such a considerable impact on adolescent smoking is because
it is a very strong social influence on kids ages 10-14,"
said James Sargent, a pediatrics professor at the school
and lead author of the study.
"Because movie exposure to smoking is so pervasive, its
impact on this age group outweighs whether peers or parents
smoke or whether the child is involved in other activities,
like sports," he added.
The authors said their research confirms findings published
last year based on a study of teens living primarily in
rural areas of New England.
"This is an extremely powerful confirmatory study that
shows that kids react the same way to the movies in other
places in the United States as they do in New England,"
said Sargent. "It means that no child is immune to the
influence of smoking in movies."
A U.S. government survey released in March showed 22.3
percent of high school students and 8.1 percent of middle
school students said they smoked cigarettes in 2004.
Reference
Source 89
November
7, 2005
