College Times

Issue date: 1/17/08 Section: Daily Buzz

Media Credit: Tariq Zehawi

As an avid movie watcher and a regular smoker, I generally dislike others telling me that I can't enjoy either. I understand that some movies might be bad enough to induce eye cancer, and I also understand the reason why people frown upon smoking. I know it's bad for you, for me, and before I started smoking, I was just as opposed to it.

At least now I can blame the movies I saw as a kid for contributing to my nasty habit.

An alliance between the film industry and the medical community has finally shown that watching smoking in movies leads to smoking in later years. The study was recently published in Pediatrics and can be found here.

The long and short of it followed a control group of about 2,000 kids, between 9 and 12. By comparing the films that these kids watched where there were incidences of people smoking cigarettes, there was a correlation between the number of films watched and the likelihood for them to take up smoking. These include films like "102 Dalmations," "George of the Jungle" and "Muppets from Space."

Correlation is the key word, since no one in the study is claiming that movie watching is the cause of smoking, though the implications seem clear.

Nature vs. nurture: the debate rages on.

From my own experience, the fact that my parents both smoke probably contributed to my smoking, though we probably shouldn't rule out social situations; my closest friends being regular smokers, and the amount of stress that a 20-year-old struggling college student, like myself, endured. The joy of being able to legally purchase smokes would eventually be replaced by the euphoria of buying my own alcohol.

Though, being a legal adult does help since no one can tell me to stop smoking or watching the movies I enjoy. Not for a lack of trying.

Recently, the MPAA, the fun-loving ratings board responsible for giving movies the G through NC-17 ratings, added a little addendum to their rating criteria. Certain anti-tobacco lobbyists are pushing for an automatic R rating for any instances of smoking, however the MPAA has conceded to consider a stricter rating for "pervasive" or "glamorized" smoking, while considering if "there is a historic or other mitigating context." This means that smoking now determines what a movie is rated.

Continued...

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