Smoky Screens

Jacob Sullum | November 21, 2005

A full-page ad in Friday's New York Times claims a "NATIONWIDE STUDY confirms that exposure to tobacco on screen is a major recruiter of new young smokers." Sponsored by various anti-smoking groups, the ad says that if Hollywood doesn't start giving an R rating to all movies that include smoking, it will be guilty of "knowing recruitment of multitudes of new young smokers by this powerful promotional channel."

The study to which the ad refers, reported in the November issue of Pediatrics, was a national survey of about 6,500 10-to-14-year-olds that found those who saw movies with the most smoking scenes were more likely to have tried cigarettes than those who saw movies with fewer smoking scenes. The survey shares a crucial defect with an earlier study (co-authored by many of the same researchers) that came to similar conclusions: Although the researchers tried to account for a variety of confounding variables, including parental smoking and measures of "rebelliousness" and "sensation seeking," it is not feasible to measure and control for all the personal and environmental factors that make some kids more likely to see smoking-heavy movies, which already tend to be R-rated. It is plausible that adolescents who are both attracted to and able to see more adult-oriented movies are also more inclined and able to experiment with adult habits, regardless of whether seeing smoking in movies makes cigarettes more appealing to them.

The survey has another important weakness: It did not consider which came first, the movie viewing or the smoking, which you'd think would be a minimum requirement for drawing a causal inference. The researchers nevertheless do not hesitate to conclude that "exposure to movie smoking is a primary independent risk factor, accounting for smoking initiation in more than one third of US adolescents 10 to 14 years of age." By contrast, their earlier study, published in The Lancet two years ago, claimed movies were responsible for more than half of smoking initiation. It's true that the new figure (38 percent) falls within the margin of error for the earlier figure (52 percent). But Stanton Glantz's Smoke Free Movies campaign, which was responsible for Friday's ad, seized on the earlier figure and used it to calculate seemingly authoritative numbers of teenagers who never would have smoked were it not for the movies they saw and who would not have died prematurely as a result.

On his tobacco policy blog, Michael Siegel, who thinks smoking in movies probably does contribute to smoking in real life, nevertheless faults his fellow activists for such false precision. In addition to noting the methodological issues I've mentioned, he suggests that "exposure to smoking in movies is likely to represent a proxy measure for a wider constellation of media-related exposures to smoking that likely all contribute to the smoking initiation process." It is both dishonest and tactically unwise, Siegel says, to pretend that research of this sort can untangle and precisely quantify each of these influences. He worries about "the credibility of tobacco control research findings among the public if they are continually exposed to these types of quantitative claims being made from research designs that are simply not 'designed' to produce such claims."

Comments

|11.21.05 @ 2:12PM|#

From my non-scientific, purely anecdotal perspective: I grew up in a smoking household, am old enought to remember cigarette ads on TV, and was exposed to all manner of "smoking initiation" from movies and other media. My first cigarette came at the urging of my troublemaking friend. My last cigarette soon followed. Virtually every other smoker I've asked tells a similar story about how they started. But I'm sure there had to be one peer pressure purveyor who got his idea from a movie. That's all the proof I need.

|11.21.05 @ 2:15PM|#

My first cigarette came at the urging of my troublemaking friend.

clearly, we need to outlaw friends in order to prevent kids from smoking.

|11.21.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Shit, I never even touched a cigarette until I was in my 20's. Even now, at 32, I'm only a 'social smoker' - ie, I'll smoke when I'm out at the bar drinking, but usually have no desire to do so in my day-to-day life.

What would our friendly anti-smoking folks have to say about my abberant behaviour?

|11.21.05 @ 2:48PM|#

Heh.. When I was a kid. I used to think Dirk Benedict was so cool as the orginal Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica because he smoked cigars. I used to imitate him with pretzel rods until my killjoy parents told me to stop.

However, I didn't smoke my first cigar (or any other tobacco product) until I was 25.

|11.21.05 @ 2:51PM|#

Rebellion was the reason I started smoking. So much for the anti-smoking adds.

|11.21.05 @ 2:52PM|#

From the looks of it we're heading towards another Hays Code with bans on the positive depiction of drug use, profanity and homosexuality being replaced by smoking, drinking and junk food.

|11.21.05 @ 2:53PM|#

What would our friendly anti-smoking folks have to say about my abberant behaviour?

I would think the prohibitionists would hate you more than they would the sterotypical chain smoker. After all, you'd be showing that people can moderate their tobacco use without giving it up entirely.

Either that, or they'll claim "you're and addict and you just don't know it yet."

|11.21.05 @ 3:12PM|#

I thought the reason everyone starts smoking is that an attractive person of the opposite sex offers them a cigarette.

|11.21.05 @ 3:16PM|#

It is plausible that adolescents who are both attracted to and able to see more adult-oriented movies are also more inclined and able to experiment with adult habits, regardless of whether seeing smoking in movies makes cigarettes more appealing to them.

Why is it that so many studies in causation fall victim to this crushing criticism? This sort of mistake happens so often that I am beginning to think that maybe the folks "studying" these sorts of things aren't really interested in the truth after all.

|11.21.05 @ 3:19PM|#

Ethan,
"This sort of mistake happens so often that I am beginning to think that maybe the folks "studying" these sorts of things aren't really interested in the truth after all. "

I'm shocked...shocked.

|11.21.05 @ 3:35PM|#

Both my parents smoked when I was growing up and I hated it. I gave them a really hard time about it, but I still mimicked it with pretzel rods and the like. There's little doubt that kids imitate what they see, whether it's on tv or in the living room. For most kids, it's only play. Even though I "smoked" pretzels when I was a kid, if either of my parents had given me an actual cigarette there's no way I would have smoked it. I had ample opportunities to do so on my own but never did until I was much older (16 or thereabouts).

Those who claim that TV causes violence, smoking etc. believe that kids are completely incapable of separating fantasy from reality. They believe a desire to play at something indicates a desire to commit the act in reality, a notion I refuse from my own experience. I would say that most fantasies, most playing, from childhood until death indicate actions not that people really want to do, but actions that people don't want to do for a variety of reasons. That's why they remain fantasy for the most part.

Take a kid, sit him in from of The Smoking Channel for a week, then make him smoke a real cigarette and see what happens. I would say children have a highly developed sense of the difference between their play and their real lives. The real problem isn't the fantasy, but a simple ignorance of possible real-world consequences which is rapidly and continually eroded. But even when those consequences are known and well understood, the play will often continue. That's part of the reason people play in the first place.

|11.21.05 @ 3:38PM|#

Both my parents smoked and I hated it. It made me carsick on hot Alabama afternoons. Also, I had heard it was unhealthy and I constantly urged them to quit. This was in the early/mid 70s, so print and TV ads were all around and I used to buy cigarette candy -- remember those sugar stick things with the red dye at the end where the ember would be? Somehow, eating the candy didn't seem inconsistent with urging my parents to quit smoking.

At around age 8, a older, troublemaking bully got me involved in shoplifting and smoking, with the implied threat of being an outcast and victim if I didn't go along. That all ended when I got caught stealing. At that point, I resumed my cigarette hating until I was in college, when I did sort of get lured in by the packaging while I was working at a drugstore. When I started smoking, however, the underlying dynamic had to do with angering and upsetting my roommate, a long-time friend who I felt was too parental and interfering in her attitude towards me. And it worked; when she realized I had been smoking in our apartment she was incensed and worried, very worried, about me.

I smoked a pack a day for about 4 years, until one morning when I experienced a wrenching pain in my chest while smoking my first cig of the day. It took about three months to quit, and I didn't smoke at all for about 3 years after that. Then came a period of occasional social smoking. But that is all behind me now. I'm back to hating cigarettes. And enjoying very much the ban on smoking in restaurants, though in principal I oppose it. I can't deny that when traveling in states that permit smoking in restaurants, I really, really dislike the smoking.

What does all that have to do with smoking in movies? I think I'm trying to say that envinronmental attitudes about smoking don't necessarily correlate with individual attitudes about smoking, which in turn do not necessarily correlate with behavior. When I first smoked, I was responding to peer pressure and the threat of punishment. When I smoked later, it was about being rebellious and spiteful. All of this took place during a period when smoking was not nearly as controversial as it is now. Even when I was in college (late 80s) bans on smoking would have seemed absurd and unthinkable in most of the country.

Then as now, smoking is laden with so much social significance that it is used as a tool against others -- to exert power over them or get under their skin -- in both directions.

|11.21.05 @ 3:53PM|#

Akira - no doubt.

I must admit that I don't like the fact that I smoke at all, so I guess I am an addict*. But only when I'm out drinking. At which time, I really do enjoy it.

The point? I'm fucked in the head! :)

* The main reason I don't like the fact that I smoke occasionally isn't because I'm against it, per se, but because it fucks with my lungs which I need to be in fairly good health to play ice hockey at the level I like to play it.

|11.21.05 @ 3:55PM|#

OK, given that my three year old's copy of Goodnight Moon is the Clement Hurd picture lacking "board book" edition, how many Kieslowski movies a week should I limit him to? Does he get a dispensation if I make him wear horse blinders while we're at the pool hall?

Non-parents need not reply.

|11.21.05 @ 5:06PM|#

My parents were both anti-smoking, as is my trauma nurse sister. Whenever they catch the with scent of tobacco smoke, I get the lecture. Lung, mouth, throat cancer, emphysema, my maternal grandmother smoked two packs a day and died horribly because of it, etc..

Of course, I don't smoke all that much. Last weekend, I treated myself to a couple of cigars. I hadn't smoked for over a month prior to that indulgence. Before that, there had been a three month gap between cigars.

Now, I don't think that the dozen cigars (give or take a couple) I smoke a year is going to kill me. Of course, the prohibitionists and a cadre of "experts" will no doubt tell me that even one stogy will eventually cause my lungs to blacken with cancer. So I better stop now if I knew what was good for me.

Trouble is, I went into smoking knowing full well that abusing tobacco could lead to health problems. I like the taste of cigars. I like the camaraderie that exists among cigars smokers. I like relaxing in the cigar lounge with a good book or my laptop. I've dug my own grave, now let me rot in it and get your hands off my Macanudos!

Wintermute|11.21.05 @ 5:10PM|#

This is tyranny of the majority overriding private property rights and, in the discussed case, First Amendment rights of freedom of expression also.

|11.21.05 @ 7:02PM|#

If these guys had their way movies like "Casablanca" would have an "R" rating.

Yeah, that makes sense...

R C Dean|11.22.05 @ 12:28PM|#

Last weekend, I treated myself to a couple of cigars. I hadn't smoked for over a month prior to that indulgence. Before that, there had been a three month gap between cigars.

Christ, getting nagged to death by women because smoke the very occasional cigar. Sounds like hell.

I have a cigar every evening after work. Now that its cooled off, I build a little pinon fire in the chiminea, and just pollute the hell out of the backyard. Heaven!