A Little Nicotine with that Popcorn?
Turns out you can smoke inside. At the movies. According to a five-year study under the direction of Dr. Stan Glantz done by the esteemed researchers at UCSF\'s Smoke Free Movies, over the past five years the U.S. movie industry has delivered an estimated 8.3 billion tobacco impressions to kids and teens. 1.7 billion images were to children 6-11. Teens, the age group most susceptible to smoking initiation, received 75% more impressions than younger kids and 20% more than young adults aged 18-24. In other words, at the most impressionable time in an adolescent\'s social development, they are being bombarded with images of something that any insurance actuary will tell them will kill them for sure.
We\'re not talking about R-rated movies here either. 88% of Disney\'s PG-13 movies included smoking although in sheer numbers of impressions, Time Warner led the way (because they made more movies). According to the study, if an R rating were applied to movies with smoking, it would reduce kids\' and teens\' first-run tobacco imagery by half over five years. And since kids have to be 18 to buy cigarettes, that makes sense.
If ever something qualified as "indecent" this is it. We\'ve been so focused on language and nudity that we have let slip by the wayside something that has been proven as harmful to our kids\' health. As offended as someone might be by Bono\'s adjectives, frankly, exposing our kids to cinematic second hand smoke in a role model capacity qualifies as obscene in our book.
Turns out you can smoke inside. At the movies. According to a five-year study under the direction of Dr. Stan Glantz done by the esteemed researchers at UCSF\'s Smoke Free Movies, over the past five years the U.S. movie industry has delivered an estimated 8.3 billion tobacco impressions to kids and teens. 1.7 billion images were to children 6-11. Teens, the age group most susceptible to smoking initiation, received 75% more impressions than younger kids and 20% more than young adults aged 18-24. In other words, at the most impressionable time in an adolescent\'s social development, they are being bombarded with images of something that any insurance actuary will tell them will kill them for sure.
We\'re not talking about R-rated movies here either. 88% of Disney\'s PG-13 movies included smoking although in sheer numbers of impressions, Time Warner led the way (because they made more movies). According to the study, if an R rating were applied to movies with smoking, it would reduce kids\' and teens\' first-run tobacco imagery by half over five years. And since kids have to be 18 to buy cigarettes, that makes sense.
If ever something qualified as "indecent" this is it. We\'ve been so focused on language and nudity that we have let slip by the wayside something that has been proven as harmful to our kids\' health. As offended as someone might be by Bono\'s adjectives, frankly, exposing our kids to cinematic second hand smoke in a role model capacity qualifies as obscene in our book.
