Study Implicates Movies
in Child, Teen Smoking

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Watching movie stars light up on screen may increase the odds a child or young teen will try smoking, study findings suggest.

Researchers say that while their findings do not mean tobacco use in movies causes kids to smoke, they are ``the first step'' toward showing it is possible.

The role of the media in children's behavior--particularly violence--has received much recent attention. But proving that media images can directly lead to a behavior is tough, as so many factors influence a child's beliefs and actions.

In this latest study, researchers at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire found that the odds of a child smoking increased in tandem with the number of films with smoking scenes he or she had seen.

This pattern remained regardless of other smoking risk factors such as having parents or friends who smoked, poor school performance or a self-reported ``rebellious'' nature.

Dr. James D. Sargent and his colleagues report the findings in the December 15th issue of the British Medical Journal.

In response to the findings, the British Medical Association (BMA) called on the UK film industry to ``stub out'' on-screen smoking.

``When smoking is glamorised in movies, young people are encouraged to experiment with a lethal habit,'' the BMA's Dr. Vivienne Nathanson said in a statement.

And an editorial accompanying the journal report made the same challenge to Hollywood. ``It is time for the entertainment industry to accept responsibility for its actions and stop serving the interests of tobacco companies,'' writes Dr. Stanton A. Glantz of the University of California, San Francisco.

Sargent's team based the findings on a survey of nearly 5,000 Vermont and New Hampshire students aged 9 to 15. Students were asked whether they had seen any of 50 recent movies that the researchers had screened for the number of smoking scenes. They also answered questions about environmental risk factors for smoking, their personality traits and perceptions of their parents' views on smoking.

The investigators found that the number of smoking instances students had seen in the movies was correlated with their odds of having tried smoking. Kids who had seen 51 to 100 smoking occurrences were 70% more likely than those who had seen fewer to have smoked. And the odds were nearly three times greater among those who had seen 150-plus smoking scenes.

According to the researchers, the effects of on-screen smoking were similar to those of having parent or sibling who smoked.

The films in the survey had been pulled from a group of more than 600. Of these, smoking was most common in ``R''-rated films, but only 10% of ``PG'' and ``PG-13'' movies--which children can see without an accompanying adult--were smoke-free.

``The results indicate that exposure to tobacco use in films is pervasive,'' Sargent's team writes. ``More importantly, such exposure is associated with trying smoking, which supports the hypothesis that films have a role in the initiation of smoking.''

In his editorial, Glantz agrees, writing that the study ''provides powerful new evidence'' that smoking in movies does contribute to adolescent smoking.

SOURCE: British Medical Journal 2001;323:1394-1397, 1378-1379.

Reference Source 89

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