World Health Organisation Wants Adult Rating For Films With Smoking

The World Health Organisation has called for all films featuring smoking to be given an instant adult rating.

The body says that it wants such movies to be deemed unsuitable for children ‘in a bid to prevent children and adolescents from starting to smoke cigarettes’.

The advice has been presented in a paper called 'Smoke-free movies: from evidence to action’, which also says that any presentation of movies featuring smoking should be preceded by strong anti-smoking advertisements.

“With ever tighter restrictions on tobacco advertising, film remains one of the last channels exposing millions of adolescents to smoking imagery without restrictions,” said Dr Douglas Bettcher, the WHO’s director for the department of prevention of non-communicable diseases.

“Smoking in films can be a strong form of promotion for tobacco products.”

It put forward evidence from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collected in 2014 suggesting that smoking on-screen could result in the recruiting of more than six million young smokers in the US, two million of which would die from 'tobacco-induced diseases’.

Additional research from the University of Bristol found that out of 5000 15-year-olds analysed in Britain and Northern Ireland, 73% who had seen the most films featuring smoking were more likely to have tried it than those who had seen the fewest.

It was found that smoking featured in a surprisingly large 44% of Hollywood movies released in 2014, as well as 36% that were marketed at and rated for young people.

The reports gave four recommendations in all; age classification ratings for films with tobacco imagery, certification in the credits that producers received nothing of value from tobacco companies in exchange for on-screen tobacco use, the ending of the display of tobacco brands in all movies, and strong anti-smoking advertising preceding movies featuring smoking.

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