Studies underscore impact of movies in influencing teens to smoke

Two new studies have underlined the significant impact of movies in influencing teens to smoke.

Washington, May 8 : Two new studies have underlined the significant impact of movies in influencing teens to smoke.

A team of researchers led by Dr. James Sargent Norris Cotton Cancer Centre conducted one study, focussing on American teens while Reiner Hanewinkel led the other study on German adolescents, named 'Exposure to Smoking in Popular Contemporary Movies and Youth Smoking in Germany', at Dartmouth Medical School.

As part of the first study, researchers used a nationally representative sample of 6,522 U.S. adolescents aged 10-14 years, and assessed their exposure to 534 popular contemporary box-office hits.

Researchers found that three out of four movies (74%) studied contained smoking, for a total of 3,830 smoking images. Based on the number of U.S. adolescents seeing each movie and the smoking contained in each, the researchers estimated that these movies delivered 13.9 billion gross smoking impressions. Sixty one percent of these impressions were delivered by youth-rated movies.

Of the group of movies surveyed, some 30 of the movies delivered more than 100 million smoking impressions each. Many of these high-impact movies were rated PG-13.

"The apparently free delivery of star smoking to a young teen population is a tobacco marketer's dream," Sargent said.

More than 3,000 actors appeared in these movies, and 500 of them smoked on screen. Yet 30 of the top stars, mostly male, delivered more than 25% of the total smoking images. At the same time, many other top actors starred in five or more of these movies without smoking in any.

As part of the second study, researchers conducted a school-based, cross sectional study of 5586 German adolescents who assessed exposure to 398 internationally distributed popular movies, 98% of which were produced and distributed by U.S. studios.

Exposure to smoking in these movies was associated with trying smoking and current smoking among the adolescents, with high exposure adolescents being 1.8 times more likely to have tried smoking and 1.7 times more likely to be a current smoker.

Researchers found that teens who had seen the most smoking in films (mostly U.S. blockbusters) were nearly twice as likely to have tried smoking than those who saw the least amount, results that mirror previous U.S. findings.

"Viewing smoking in globally distributed movies is a risk factor for smoking in European adolescents," Hanewinkel said.

"Limiting exposure to movie smoking could have important world-wide public health implications," Hanewinkel added.

The findings of the study were published in Pediatrics.

ANI