The CDC just released the annual update of its fact sheet on studio performance on smoking in movies. You can read it at here.
Here is their overview:
- Watching movies that include smoking causes young people to start smoking. The more smoking young people see on screen, the more likely they are to start smoking.
- The percentage of youth-rated movies (G, PG, PG-13) that were smokefree doubled from 2002 to 2014 (from 32% to 64%). But in youth-rated movies that showed any smoking, the average number of tobacco incidents per movie also nearly doubled (from 21 to 38) over the same period.
- The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the studios' organization that assigns ratings, provides a "smoking label" along with the regular rating for some movies that contain smoking. However, almost 9 of every 10 (88%) youth-rated, top-grossing movies with smoking do not carry an MPAA "smoking label."
- The 2012 Surgeon General’s Report (Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults) concluded that an industrywide standard to rate movies with tobacco incidents R could result in reductions in youth smoking.
- Giving an R rating to future movies with smoking would be expected to reduce the number of teen smokers by nearly 1 in 5 (18%) and prevent 1 million deaths from smoking among children alive today.