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“Tobacco companies used to pay studios, directors [and] actors for product placement on the screen,” said [Erika] Sward [of the American Lung Association]. “We know that was one of the ways that the tobacco industry directly marketed their products, many of which were aimed at young people. That was prior to the Master Settlement Agreement with the tobacco companies in 1998, but we still do see a great deal of tobacco use in the movies and on screen. It was way back in 1964 [that] the Surgeon General concluded that smoking causes lung cancer.”

An advocacy group that uses proxy resolutions to spur consumer-electronics chains and oil producers to change practices is turning its attention to mutual fund companies that invest in tobacco — and Hollywood. [News article is subscription only]

It’s early days for this latest salvo in France’s bid to reduce the nation’s nicotine intake, and it’s unclear if there would be a move to factor smoking into the ratings system. While many agree that system is in need of an overhaul after several certifications have been challenged in recent years — mostly owing to sex and violence — one industry executive tells me of a hard crackdown on smoking: “If it’s a battle they start, I don’t believe it’s going to work. Society’s mood is going to be, ‘What? No way.’ It would be ridiculed.”

The debate was ignited after the Socialist senator Nadine Grelet-Certenais accused France’s film-makers of continuing to advertise for the tobacco industry. “Seventy per cent of new French films have at least one scene of someone smoking. This more or less helps to make its use banal, even promote it, to children and adolescents,” Grelet-Certenais told the Sénat, the upper house of parliament.

Health Minister Agnés Buzyn said she would be contacting the French culture minister - whose remit includes the country’s film industry - to discuss the issue and that so-far unspecified “measures” would be taken to make French directors and screenwriters kick their tobacco habit.

Montgomery, who’s not a smoker, had to learn how to make it look convincing. But the Stranger Things cast doesn’t use Hollywood-standard herbal cigarettes: they use real Marlboro Reds. Why? “The smoke plays so much thicker onscreen,” says Montgomery. Plus, he’s fairly certain that co-stars David Harbour and Winona Ryder “just wanted to smoke real cigarettes.” Over the course of a five-hour shoot, Montgomery would go through “three or four packs,” then wake up the next day with a smoke-induced hangover.

A clampdown has been urged at Westminster against smoking on the reality TV show Love Island amid concerns it is glamorising the habit to young viewers. Liberal Democrat peer Lord Storey said contestants on the ITV programme regularly smoked and pressed ministers over the message this sent to youngsters.

The state spends $600 million a year to subsidize film and TV productions, yet promised job and tax gains remain elusive.

India's Health Ministry has asked the Telecom Ministry to enforce running 30-second anti-tobacco messages before films and television programs with tobacco imagery, a policy followed by movie theaters and broadcasters but not by Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar, and other streamers in India.

Investors with $64 billion urge Hollywood studios to make youth-rated movies tobacco-free, as a new web-platform from As You Sow tracks investments in tobacco and entertainment companies that promote tobacco to kids.

Making movies smoke-free could save about a million lives. That is a claim Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health makes in a public activism campaign it launched this year to end the portrayal of smoking in movies — and most especially in youth-rated films.

Movies are entertainment, an escape from reality. The best films make us laugh and cry; we come away feeling more alive. Yet the facts show that movies can lead to real deaths, too. So to everyone in Hollywood involved in the ratings system, the choice is yours. Which side do you want to be on?

Study after study has shown the tobacco related imagery in movies can influence children to begin smoking. [Includes audio link]

“Most smokers are enticed into nicotine addiction as children, and the American film industry must take assertive action now to ensure that our kids are not lured into using this uniquely lethal product by depictions of smoking in major motion pictures," said Gary Reedy, CEO of the American Cancer Society.

"Since the industry's progress halted, major studios and independent producer-distributors have released 210 top-grossing, youth-rated U.S. films featuring more than 6,000 tobacco incidents, delivering 60.5 billion tobacco impressions to audiences in U.S. theaters alone," the letter says.

According to the U.S. CDC, exposure to on-screen smoking will recruit more than six million U.S. children to smoke, of whom two million will die prematurely from tobacco-induced cancer, heart disease, lung disease or stroke.

"By voluntarily implementing policies that require R ratings for smoking, the film industry can avert 1 million tobacco deaths among today's children, according to estimates from the CDC," the coalition of health groups said in the statement.

A coalition of the nation's most influential health organizations -- responding to a July 7 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- have demanded that movie producers, distributors and exhibitors apply an R rating to all films that include depictions of smoking or tobacco.

The fashion and entertainment industries seem stubbornly and dangerously stuck in the past as they fall back on old stereotypes, says Truth Initiative's CEO.

“The argument we hear sometimes, that ‘this is a long tradition in Hollywood’ or that ‘they’re just reflecting reality,’ is bogus,” Glantz said. “Most of that smoking got put in there because it was paid for."

The study's findings are a concern for South Africa’s National Council Against Smoking‚ which lambasted movie houses for “taking a deadly product and associating it with glamour‚ thrills and independence”.

"En todo el mundo se puede constatar consistentemente que hay dos o tres veces más riesgo en niños que están expuestos a ver una gran cantidad de fumadores en filmes."

This year’s batch of Emmy-nominated shows may be celebrating the chance to compete for television’s top prize, but almost all the finalists in the comedy and drama categories are losing when it comes to public health. All—except one—feature characters smoking.

If what these women wear, eat, and promote, sells, why would cigarette be any different? Three million likes is an easy answer to that question. Here’s the truth: 1,300 smokers die every single day. Isn’t it time for fashion to quit?

Since Pahlaj Nihalani took over as chief of [India's] Central Board for Film Certification (CBFC), it seems that not a week goes by without the board creating some new controversy. The latest controversial proposal from the CBFC is to certify a film as 'Adult' if it has characters lighting up a cigarette or drinking on screen.

Rated R for smoking would become a reality if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gets its way. [Includes local interviews in 02:45 video report]

[Deborah] Armott [of UK's Action on Smoking and Health] told the Observer: “Love Island’s use of free cigarettes might have been designed to encourage smoking. We will be asking Ofcom to consider our complaint as matter of urgency.”

"Why is it that filmmakers are aware that showing smoking can have a negative influence on kids but showing foul language or showing all kinds of sexual content or showing horrific violence, apparently, that doesn't have any influence on children at all?" Gildemeister [of the Parents Television Council] asked. "They let a lot of the other things slide, things that I think most parents [consider] are more serious and more egregious than smoking."

Research shows that when it comes to smoking, children are heavily influenced by some of the folks they consider the coolest of the cool: actors in movies.

“Since 2010 there has been no progress in reducing the total number of tobacco incidents in youth-rated movies,” the CDC said. “Had the trend established from 2005 to 2010 continued, all youth-rated films would have been smoke-free by 2015.”