This distorted portrait of the incidence of smoking leads kids to believe that everybody's doing it, when in fact smoking is decreasing in every other age group. Smoke alarm Perhaps even more unsettling than the epidemic of cinematic cigarette consumption is the fact that Hollywood and the MPAA regard the issue as insubstantial. Yet there's disagreement even among A-list directors. Michael Mann, who directed The Insider about tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, believes that little or no restrictions should be placed on filmmakers. Of course nicotine is a drug, but I don't think a film should get an 'R' rating because someone smokes a few cigarettes.
People smoke all the time.
And people are dying all the time. Every year over 420,000 Americans die from smoking-related diseases. We know from tobacco industry documents that they have been secretly targeting and manipulating Hollywood for years. Health advocates counter that the message Hollywood sends is not always the message kids get. Kids model behavior.