ATLANTA, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Two U.S. experts say that the single greatest media threat to American children comes from tobacco-laced movies and videos.
In a presentation before the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition, Dr. James Sargent and Stanton Glantz advocated that new movies with on-screen smoking be given an R rating and that anti-smoking advertisements be aired before any film containing tobacco use.
Three major population studies between 1999-2004 display a striking dose-response by adolescents to on-screen smoking in movies and videos: The more smoking children see on screen, the more likely they are to become smokers, the researchers say. In 2004, 75 percent of popular G, PG and PG-13 movies featured smoking.
From one-third to one-half of all new young smokers are primarily recruited by viewing tobacco use in films and videos, a total of about 390,000 children each year, says Sargent.
In an effort to reduce the number of adolescents' Hollywood influences due to smoking in films and videos, Sargent and Glantz developed the Smoke Free Movies campaign.
