Research shows that youth exposure to tobacco imagery in movies directly influences youth smoking behaviors. For example:
Thirty-seven percent of adolescents who start smoking do so because of smoking images they saw in movies.
Youth who are heavily exposed to on-screen smoking imagery are approximately two to three times as likely to begin smoking, compared with youth who are lightly exposed.
Implementing an R rating for movies with smoking would lead to an 18% decline in teen smoking and prevent up to a million deaths among children and teens alive today.
Today, all six major studios — Comcast, Disney, Fox, Sony, Time Warner and Viacom — have adopted policies to decrease tobacco depictions in their youth-rated films. Still, tobacco use remains prevalent in movies that appeal to youth because many of these policies include exceptions and loopholes. Additionally, with new movie releases increasingly available via at-home streaming, many young people have more access to movies of all ratings.
A new report by the National Opinion Research Center finds that tobacco depictions in movies remain a pervasive problem. In 2020, 38% (27 out of 71) of top-grossing movies included tobacco depictions, including 10 movies that were rated appropriate for youth audiences. Amazon’s PG-rated movie “The Personal History of David Copperfield” included 13 total tobacco incidents, all images of cigars and pipes. The remaining 9 out of 10 youth-rated movies that included tobacco were rated PG-13, like Amazon’s “Words on Bathroom Walls” with 35 instances of cigars depicted and the independent animated movie, “My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising” with 22 instances of cigars. Cigars were the most common tobacco product shown in youth-rated films, according to the report. In total there were close to 1,000 incidents of combustible tobacco depictions in 2020 top movies.