Teens get sucked in
http://www.smh.com.au/news/cancer/teens-get-sucked-in/2006/08/23/1156012605636.html

The sight of actors smoking on the big screen is a powerful sales tool.

Six of the top 10 films most attractive to teenagers this year have featured smoking and one, Click, has so much smoking it's the equivalent of two 30-second ads, says Anita Tang, director of health strategies at the Cancer Council of NSW.

"Teenagers are strongly influenced by seeing tobacco smoking in movies," Tang says. "They are more likely to experiment with smoking and think more positively about it after seeing smoking in movies."

That's why the Cancer Council is calling on the NSW Government to amend the Public Health Act so anti-smoking ads are screened before youth-targeted movies showing smoking.

"Counter-ads help inoculate young people against the influence of seeing actors light up on the big screen," Tang says. "They leave teenage viewers less approving of smoking and, for those who smoke, more likely to think about quitting."

Movies are one of the last legal ways to promote tobacco, which may explain why smoking in movies began to soar during the mid-1990s when electronic advertising was being phased out. Actors lit a cigarette every 10 to 15 minutes in the '70s and '80s, by the '90s they lit up every one to three minutes, according to the Cancer Council's Screen Out Smoking campaign. By 2002, rates were similar to those of the 1950s.

"We should start bribing directors in Hollywood to screen smoking in movies," proclaims central character Nick Naylor in the film Thank You for Smoking, a satirical expose of the life of a tobacco lobbyist. The scene is a tense meeting of tobacco industry executives who have gathered to solve the serious problem of declining smoking rates.

"The number of teens smoking is falling like a ship from heaven," bemoans a tobacco baron. Naylor impresses his colleagues with his slick solution: "We need to put the sex back into cigarettes and put smoking back onto the screen."

Viewers may smile, but it's so close to the truth it isn't funny. US tobacco industry documents have shown the industry has paid large amounts to have its products appear in movies and TV series. Sylvester Stallone, for example, was paid $500,000 to use Brown and Williamson products in no fewer than five feature films. And $350,000 was paid to have Lark cigarettes appear in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill.

Paying actors to smoke is no longer legal. But paid or not, stars who smoke in movies are as influential as any advertising campaign, if not more so.
 

Ten- to 14-year-olds exposed to high levels of movie smoking were almost three times as likely to start smoking, compared to those with little exposure, according to a study of 2603 adolescents published in The Lancet in 2003. Research from the US, published in Pediatrics last year, demonstrated that more than a third of teenagers started smoking as a result of seeing smoking in movies.

Among 14-year-olds in NSW, 37,000 have tried smoking according to 2002 figures, while 19 per cent of girls and 39 per cent of boys are daily smokers. Adolescence is a high-risk time for getting hooked. The vast majority of adult smokers (almost 90 per cent, according to the Mayo Clinic in the US) get hooked on tobacco in their teens.

Most adolescents believe they can quit smoking any time they want to, says Bianca Crosling of Quit Victoria, who runs education programs in schools. "Addiction is beyond their comprehension," Crosling says. What they don't realise is how easily they can become addicted at even low doses of nicotine.

For some adolescents, signs of addiction can start developing even after a single cigarette, according to a new study involving 311 year 7 students published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal this year. For most students in the study, symptoms of addiction showed up long before becoming a daily smoker. That's why Tang's message is: "Don't - you'll get addicted before you know it."

Health messages aimed at deterring teens from smoking need to make abstinence appealing. As well as focusing on finances, fitness and dating, exposing the con tactics of the tobacco industry is an angle increasingly used to incite adolescent resistance to tobacco. "Don't be sucked in", the central message of a counter-ad developed by the NSW Cancer Council, has proved successful in reducing approval of smoking among teenage viewers.

"In a world where tobacco giants crave fresh blood," warns the 30-second counter-ad, "a new menace lurks ... behind all the glamour, behind all the gloss, it's waiting to suck you in. Don't be fooled by the movie you're about to see. Don't ... be a sucker."

Thank You for Smoking opens today.

Screen out Smoking campaign:
cancercouncil.com.au/screeningoutsmoking

Teenage anti-smoking
oxygen.org.au

LOOK WHO'S SMOKING

*Eight out of 10 new smokers are teenagers.

*A 2002 survey of Australian secondary school students found that among 12-year-olds, 3.1 per cent of boys and 6.2 per cent of girls smoked.

*At 17, the figures peaked at 22.8 per cent for boys and 25.6 per cent for girls.

*Since 1998, smoking in youth-oriented movies has increased by 50 per cent.

Source: Cancer Council of NSW.