Tom is enjoying a nice cigar with his good buddy Jerry, not knowing adolescents are watching this. Yet, do they know that children imitate what they see in films, especially shows they watch daily according to American Academy of Pediatrics? Kids seeing tobacco use about 500 times per scenes “increases” the likelihood of that child trying cigarettes by 49%. Everyday, over 1,000 teens try their first cigarette because of what they saw in the movies.
Between 2002-2013, almost half (45%) of top grossing movies in the U.S were rated 6 of every 10 pg-13 movies (61%) showed smoking or other type of tobacco use. In 2013, there was 782 tobacco incidents in the 140 movies grossing among the top 10 for at least a week. These are the same messages that the tobacco industry spends $18 million on each day to promote their products.
And because half the smoking in movies that kids see is in youth-rated (G/PG/PG-13) movies, smoking in youth-rated films accounts for about 200,000 kids a year starting to smoke, 60,000 of whom will die as a result.
Others may disagree with me because they know adolescents or young children can’t get any type of tobacco because they’re young but they can when they get older.
If there’s going to be any tobacco in a kids movie, it should be rated “R” to let parents know there is smoking in the movie and they should have strong anti-tobacco advertisements before the movie. So think about the next time you’re going to watch a movie with your children!
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