The problem is, the industry's self-policed ban on Hollywood tobacco payoffs hasn't worked. There's more smoking in the movies today than before 1989. And stars are still lighting up and displaying brands - priceless celebrity endorsements repeated in perpetuity on TV, tapes, DVDs and cable. Either people in Hollywood are still on the take, in which case they're corrupt. Or else they're doing Big Tobacco's dirty work for free - in which case they're stupid.
Money talks louder than art in Hollywood.
Product placement in movies is routine business, whether the paying audience is aware of it or not. Laziness is a plausible explanation, of course. Smoking is a clich . It's a cheap, sloppy, self-indulgent shortcut for writers, directors and actors. They don't even bother to be true to life.