 |
ROLE MODEL? For teens, there’s
nothing lost in translation when Scarlett Johansson
lights up.
Yoshio Sato © 2003 Focus
Features |
When a group of Stanford pediatricians
began a public campaign last fall against Hollywood’s
depictions of cigarette smoking, some Palo Alto parents
were caught off guard. “We’d get the reaction,
‘What are you talking about? Is there
a lot of smoking in movies?’ ” says Lisa
Chamberlain.
She and Seth Ammerman, both clinical assistant professors
of pediatrics, direct the advocacy program, a required
component for second-year residents at Lucile Packard
Children’s Hospital. The idea is to involve physicians
in public service projects that can make an impact on
patients’ health outside hospital walls. Ammerman
says he and Chamberlain assigned the anti-tobacco cause
this year because “our residents recognize that
tobacco is the No. 1 health problem in the country,”
and the movement for smoke-free movies is getting stronger,
armed with exhaustive statistics and a new landmark
study.
For anyone skeptical of tobacco’s star billing
in Hollywood, the Stanford group bolsters its case with
evidence gathered by Smoke Free Movies, an organization
run by UCSF professor of medicine Stanton Glantz, MS
’70, PhD ’73. In the year ending last May,
73 percent of the top-grossing movies featured smoking.
(In the week of January 12 this year, nine of the top
10 did.) These weren’t cameo appearances: the
films averaged 12 light-ups per hour (up from 7.7 in
2000-2001). And tobacco is gaining ground in the films
kids watch: half the smoking scenes were in movies rated
G, PG or PG-13, compared with 21 percent in 1999-2000.
Interestingly, a higher percentage of PG-13 flicks than
R-rated movies featured tobacco use.
But does that evidence amount to a smoking gun? Who
can say that young people try cigarettes because they
see the stars puffing away onscreen, as opposed to other
influences?
As it happens, a group of Dartmouth physicians say
they can, in a study published in the Lancet
last June. Previous research associated movie smoking
with adolescent experimentation, but this two-year study
of more than 3,500 adolescents—controlled for
variables such as personality traits, social influences
and parental characteristics—demonstrated that
exposure to onscreen smoking predicts whether
adolescents will try cigarettes. Those with the greatest
exposure were three times as likely to start smoking
as those with the least, and children of nonsmokers
were the most susceptible.
For Ammerman and Chamberlain, the Dartmouth study clinched
their choice of this year’s advocacy project.
If they could convince Hollywood to reduce the prevalence
of smoking in movies, they could curb the number of
children taking up the habit.
Over the course of the program, each of the 19 second-year
residents will spend one month at work on public education
and a letter-writing and petition-signing campaign.
But with a difference: aided by a local supermarket,
the group has amassed and flattened countless empty
cigarette cartons, using the backs to collect signatures.
They plan to feature the stack at a June press conference,
then ship the letters and cartons to studio heads.
“Our goal is to get 1,000 names; so far we’ve
got about 120,” says Patricia Fong, who spent
her recent stint on the project talking to physicians,
politicians, city councils, police and fire departments,
schools and other groups in San Mateo and Santa Clara
counties. “Everyone’s been really enthusiastic,”
she says, when asked if anyone has raised arguments
about filmmakers’ freedom of expression.
In fact, the Stanford pediatricians call for self-regulation
in the industry, not legally imposed prohibitions. They
support the recommendations of WHO and other health
organizations: that films depicting tobacco use be rated
R; that antismoking ads run before screenings; that
credits include a declaration that nothing of value
has been received in exchange for using or displaying
tobacco; and that there be no identification of brands.
Talking of self-regulation, Ammerman has some plans
for his own profession. “There’s a movement
to document which magazines are taking cigarette ads—and
we want to get physicians to stop taking those that
do,” he explains. Tobacco advertising is prohibited
in magazines if more than 15 percent of their readership
is under 18, but defining readership can be slippery.
And children, like everybody else, will kill time with
what’s available in the doctor’s waiting
room.
|
