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A study of the five national free-to-air stations found it occurred in one in three prime time programmes – and nearly one-in-ten (8%) adverts or trailers. Channel 5 was the biggest offender. The study published in Tobacco Control found the amount of tobacco content has hardly changed in five years – including before the watershed. For instance it is seen in about a third of soap operas, chat shows and news and current affairs programmes, around four-in-ten documentaries and drams, half of comedies and two-in-three cartoons – mainly The Simpsons.

India's government is looking into suggestions by a panel that short films be made to convey anti-smoking messages with those actors who are depicted as smoking on screen, a top official has said.

Nigeria's federal government will "bring National Film and Video Censorship Board to the table." [Note: Nigeria's "Nollywood" claims to be the world's second most prolific film industry, after India's. See https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/nollywood-second-largest-film-industry.]

[Given tobacco imagery in Neflix' first original Indian series, Sacred Games:] A health ministry official said, “Currently, sites that stream online content are not required to carry health warnings on tobacco. But after the recent decision to ratify the FCTC protocol against illicit tobacco trade we are looking at FCTC provisions dealing with cross-border tobacco advertisements.”

Tamil actor-turned-politician Sarath Kumar has expressed his ire over the TV channels holding debates on "smoking scenes in movies." After the release of the first look of Thalapathy Vijay's SARKAR, PMK founder Anbumani Ramadoss slammed it as the lead actor Vijay posed smoking a cigarette. He said it promoted smoking and a similar stand was taken by the Tamil Nadu People's Forum for Tobacco Control. The Tamil TV channels picked this issue and starting holding debates on smoking scenes in movies and their impact.

Smoking scenes in Chinese movies and TV series have generally declined over the past decade, but not all producers are keen on extinguishing such on-screen depictions. Last year's figures were worse than in 2016, according to an anti-tobacco group.

MPAA chairman Charles Rivkin defended the way that the voluntary movie ratings system informs parents about smoking in movies, as a group of senators called for the industry to take greater action to limit tobacco use on screen … He also pushed back on the idea of giving an R rating to just about any movie that depicts smoking.

The Motion Picture Association of America should act to reduce youth exposure to smoking in movies, including by issuing an R rating to movies that feature tobacco imagery, wrote seven U.S. senators in a letter to MPAA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin.

Some Democratic senators are encouraging the new head of the Motion Picture Association of America to ensure “responsible” practices when it comes to displaying use of tobacco in films – a plea they believe will stop young people from taking up smoking.

The U.S. Surgeon General has definitively concluded that exposure to smoking in movies leads to youth initiation, but enactment of certain public health policies could reduce youth smoking rates by nearly 20% and prevent one million deaths.

“Although the evidence connecting smoking imagery to youth smoking initiation is strong, MPAA has yet to take meaningful action to discourage tobacco imagery in films or effectively warn viewers and parents of tobacco’s presence in a movie,” write the Senators in their letter to MPAA Chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin. “Our nation’s dramatic decline in youth tobacco use is a tremendous achievement, but on-screen depictions remain a threat to this progress and threaten to re-normalize tobacco use in our society. We cannot afford to lose any ground in this area.”

A young patient of mine once said to me, “If famous actors can chain smoke every day and be successful, live so long and also be physically fit, then why can’t my parents let me smoke once a week with friends?” The psychology that a role model is doing something wrong, hence it’s okay for us to do it too, exists amongst many.

Obviously, the industry is aware of the problem, so what’s left but for them to do something about it?

...Deadpool, a 20th Century Fox release, opens with Reynolds exhaling a cloud of cigarette smoke into the camera, probably meant to tweak his superhero cousins at Disney, which doesn’t permit smoking in its movies. Disney, of course, is on the brink of acquiring Fox’s entertainment division, which will make it even more of a franchise-oriented juggernaut than it already is. Although that’s an alarming prospect, I’m all for purging cigarettes from movies and TV, which statistics show have an undue influence in getting kids to start smoking.

Cigarettes have been such an integral part of movies for so long that one big concern in the lead up to Disney and Fox's planned merger is — seriously — all the smoking in Fox movies. This hour: a look at the cultural history of smoking. Participants include film critic David Edelstein. [Includes 49:30 audio]

Fox was the studio closest to Big Tobacco...Last year, Fox Searchlight Pictures released a biopic of Billie Jean King, who served on Philip Morris’ board for five years. Philip Morris used women’s tennis to push Virginia Slims to young women.

Studios also face pressure overseas from the World Health Organization, which has called for governments to implement more aggressive regulation of movies that contain tobacco imagery. India, France and Britain are among the countries where action has been taken or is being discussed.

Top executives of Philip Morris (later Altria) and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (later Fox) served on each other’s boards of directors for twenty-five years, from 1989 to 2013. A 1985 memorandum from the tobacco company’s CEO, discovered in the course of lawsuits against the tobacco company, named Mr. Murdoch as a media proprietor “sympathetic with our position … an ally that we can and should exploit.”

…[A]ntismoking advocates want Mr. Iger to extend [Disney's tobacco depictions] rule to all future youth-rated films (G, PG, PG-13) made by Fox and its Fox Searchlight specialty label, which are among the assets that Disney is buying from Rupert Murdoch for $54.2 billion. Among other things, activists want “graphic health warnings” added to youth-rated films in the Fox library that depict smoking — like “Avatar” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past” — before selling them on DVD or via video-on-demand services.

The campaigners want the communications regulator, Ofcom, and the British Board of Film Classification to monitor youth exposure to depictions of tobacco use on screen, to discourage any depictions of tobacco use and require broadcasters or cinemas to run anti-smoking adverts during presentations that feature smoking.

In a strongly worded submission to the Select Committee on Science and Technology ASH and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol studies warn that smoking on TV and in films encourages children to take up smoking. They point out that children in the UK are still exposed to significant amounts of smoking on screen and that it is the amount of smoking that is important, not whether it is glamourised or not.

Among TV shows popular with teens and young adults, Netflix had the most portrayals of tobacco use.

Regardless of why the characters are seen smoking, it's striking that many of the shows included in the study, such as Stranger Things and Fuller House, are aimed at children. We also know that the normalisation of tobacco use in movies does have a strong impact on a child's risk of future tobacco use," David Hill, chairman for the American Academy of Pediatrics' Council on Communications and Media told US News and World Report.

The Truth Initiative — the nonprofit anti-tobacco organization — released a study that compared seven popular Netflix shows to seven popular broadcast shows. In this sample it found Netflix’s shows featured characters smoking almost three times as often as those produced by broadcast networks like NBC, ABC and CBS.

[Truth Initiative's Robin] Koval suggests smoking on TV shows could increase if streaming services continue to rapidly expand programming and don’t adopt policies discouraging smoking, like those in place at the broadcast networks.

Majority of programs popular with young audiences prominently depict smoking, with "Stranger Things" the worst offender.

Netflix shows contained 319 “tobacco incidents” — more than twice the number in broadcast and cable TV shows, which had 139, per the watchdog organization’s analysis of top series for the 2015-16 season.

“We know that there is a direct correlation between youths seeing (smoking) in films and also them beginning to be tobacco consumers or even just trying it,” said Peterborough Public Health peer leader and presenter Meagan Lacombe. “It’s also a concern because films are the last place that tobacco companies can advertise to youth.” [VIDEO]

As the world gets ready for this Sunday’s Academy Awards, some Vancouver students are playing the role of movie critic. [Vancouver students] have kept a close eye on acting and cinematography and spotted something they don't like. Linda Aylesworth tells us what they're doing about it. [VIDEO]

The [provincial] government received an “F” for failing to protect Alberta youth from the depiction of smoking in youth-rated movies and a “D” for not implementing and enforcing approved legislation to prohibit tobacco sales to minors. [Full report at http://bit.ly/2FYcwdx]