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Berkeley,
California (Thursday, December 20, 2000) – The
Berkeley City Council passed a resolution Tuesday night (Dec.19,
2000) encouraging California filmmakers not to glamorize tobacco in
films. The City of Berkeley Tobacco Prevention Program will be
sending this resolution to filmmakers and movie stars, citing the
impact of smoking in films on young people, particularly among youth
who see actors as role models. In addition, the film-makers will
receive a 2001 wall calendar featuring the anti-tobacco artwork of
13 Berkeley students recognized earlier this year as winners of the
Artists Resisting Tobacco Project.
Marcia
Brown-Machen, Tobacco Prevention Program Director says, "Many
teenagers look up to actors and actresses as role models."
A City of Berkeley survey of United Artists Theater patrons
in April showed that 13 percent of movie goers say smoking in films
strongly influenced their desire to smoke.
The group was equally divided between smokers and
non-smokers.
A
study released earlier this year from Dartmouth Medical School in
New Hampshire, finds 95 percent of the most popular movies from 1988
to 1997 depict actors using tobacco--with a major character doing so
in more than half the movies. Yet, in California only 18 percent of
the adult population smokes. In a 1998 review of films produced from
the 1990's, UCSF Professor Stan Glantz found that nearly 80 percent
of male stars in films smoke even though only 25 per cent of
American adult males smoke. This is a 50 percent increase from the
1970's when less than 30 percent of lead characters smoked.
When
an actor lights up millions of young people around the world get the
message that smoking is sexy, exciting, powerful, sports related,
sophisticated, or associated with power or fame.
There
is a dangerous message that most everyone smokes. This does not
portray the reality that most (75 percent) of American adults do not
smoke. When tobacco use is viewed as a societal norm, it implies
that smoking is acceptable and is another factor in encouraging
young people to use tobacco according to the American Lung
Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails.
Professor
Connie Pechman, at the University of California, Irvine, measured
pro-smoking attitudes among youth before and after they attended a
feature film. She found
that an additional 14 percent of the ninth graders surveyed had a
positive attitude about tobacco after seeing the smoke-filled film
"Reality Bites."
In
a newly released film,
"Playing Mona Lisa" currently showing in Berkeley
theaters, the teenage star Alicia Witt refuses a cigarette from her
close friend, noting that she doesn't smoke. Her friend convinces
her that Alicia should smoke since she is depressed because smoking
is comforting. With
this encouragement the star lights up. This film gives the wrong
message to youth to smoke for comfort when they feel depressed.
During
the past eight years, tobacco use was measured in 400 movies through
a partnership between the American Lung Association and teenage
volunteers. Seventy-eight
percent or 311 movies, contained some form of tobacco use, mostly
cigarette and cigar smoking.
Two
thirds of all major children's animated films include the use of
alcohol and tobacco according to the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention. They cite that all seven feature-length animated films
released in 1996 and 1997 contained tobacco use.
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