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The 390,000 new teen smokers
recruited each year by U.S. movies are worth $4.1 billion in
lifetime sales revenue to the tobacco industry, UCSF
researchers report in the April 2006 issue of Pediatrics.
Combining health data with business
figures from Philip Morris USA and RJ Reynolds, UCSF's Center for
Tobacco Control Research and Education, supported by the National
Cancer Institute, also calculates that Hollywood movies with
smoking generate $894 million per year in lifetime tobacco
profits. (Sales revenue and profits are net present value).
"Film is the single biggest recruiter
of new young smokers," says medical professor Stanton Glantz,
co-author of the research note. "Either Hollywood studios
still get paid off, which is corrupt, or else studio-owners
Disney, Time Warner, Sony, GE Universal, News Corp. and Viacom are
pumping up tobacco industry profits for free, which is
stupid."
The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA)
between state Attorneys General and domestic tobacco firms
prohibits tobacco product placement, but brand appearances
dominated by Marlboro persist and un-branded tobacco use on film
has steadily increased.
The MSA does not cover the tobacco
companies' overseas affiliates. Another study recently found that
BAT and Philip Morris International brand appearances almost
tripled in Bollywood films after India banned tobacco ads in 2004.
"Thank You for Smoking is my early
favorite for Best Documentary," comments co-author Benjamin
Alamar, an economist. Based on Christopher Buckley's 1993 novel,
Thank You for Smoking, in theaters this weekend, satirizes a
tobacco flack soliciting Hollywood's help.
The U.S. CDC repeatedly cites smoking in
movies as a primary reason the decline in teen smoking rates has
stalled in recent years.
The Motion Picture Association of America
has refused to update its rating system to discourage tobacco use
in future youth-rated movies. It has also kept two dozen state
Attorneys General waiting for more than three months to learn if
the studios will add anti-tobacco PSAs to future DVDs of smoking
films, as the prosecutors requested in December 2005.
http://www.ucsf.edu/
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