SMOKING APPEARING IN MORE FILMS

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Is Oscar coughing? Experts say Hollywood movie
characters are smoking more than ever -- despite an overall decline in
smoking among Americans as a whole.

"The use of tobacco in films is increasing and is reinforcing misleading
images that present smoking as a widespread and socially desirable
activity," according to a study conducted by Dr. Stanton Glantz of the
Institute for Health Policy Studies at the University of California, San
Francisco, and Theresa Stockwell of the Central Coast Tobacco Free Regional
Project in Prunedale, California.

The investigation, which appears in the current issue of the journal Tobacco
Control, continues Glantz and Stockwell's ongoing research into the
incidence of smoking in American films from the 1960s up to the present day.

They randomly chose 5 of the 20 top-grossing films for the years 1990-1996,
and examined the incidence of smoking, types of characters smoking, and
implicit or explicit pro-or anti-smoking messages inherent in every film.

Glantz and Stockwell say that while "...the overall rate of (onscreen)
tobacco use appears to have 'bottomed out' in the 1980s," it is "...now
increasing, with levels of tobacco use comparable to that observed in the
1960s... before the US Surgeon General's first report on smoking and
health."

In their look at 35 of the top-grossing films of the 1990s, the researchers
discovered that:

- -- 57% of all major screen characters smoked. But the researchers say that,
in reality, just 14% of Americans who fit the demographics of those major
characters would actually be smokers in real life.

- -- Lead characters, usually positive role models for viewers, are lighting
up more often. "Although none of the leads in our sample smoked in 1990, in
1991-1996, 80% of the male leads and 27% of female leads smoked," the study
authors say.

- -- Smoking is becoming increasingly identified with affluence. The
researchers say the percentage of movie smokers identified as middle- or
upper-class has increased from 45% to 79% between the 1960s and the 1990s.
"Films continue to present the smoker as one who is typically white, male,
middle-class, successful, and attractive, a movie hero who takes smoking for
granted," the researchers say.

- -- The "cigar craze" has swept Hollywood. The study found that "of total
tobacco events in 1996, 34% involved cigars." All five of the 1996 films
reviewed included cigar-chomping characters, the researchers say.

Hollywood can't blame the tobacco industry -- "product placement" efforts by
manufacturers effectively disappeared during the late 1980s. Still, Glantz
and Stockwell say Hollywood may be providing cigarette companies with an
even sweeter deal: free advertising. "We found that the images associated
with tobacco use in the movies -- power, autonomy, and success -- were more
consonant with the imagery of tobacco advertising than with the reality of
tobacco use," they wrote.

The investigators do not advocate censorship. However, they propose that
short anti-smoking ads be run in theaters before the start of particularly
nicotine-friendly movies, "to neutralize the pro-tobacco influences in the
film."

In a related story, a recent study of Hong Kong high school students
conducted by Dr. Marvin Goldberg of Hong Kong's University of Science and
Technology revealed that most thought over 40% of people smoke worldwide --
and the teens thought that even more Americans (55%) smoke. Goldberg blames
these misconceptions on the students' "exposure to American media including
product placement (of tobacco products) in movies.

Copyright © 1998 Reuters Limited.