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. Studies of recent Hollywood movies show that smoking continues to be three times more frequent on screen than off. What's more, it's the rich, powerful and glamorous who smoke in movies, when in reality it's the young, depressed, poor and least educated who smoke. It doesn't matter if the good guys or the bad guys smoke.