SMOKING SCENES

Smoking Scenes

Smoking Scenes

Introduction

Around the world including the United States of America there has been a growing number calling by public health and medical agencies for movies which have smoking scenes in it to be adult rated. The theory and the concept behind this believe is the fact that such ratings could have a significant impact on reducing the coverage of the youth to the scenes which includes smoking in such movies, which they believe is the direct cause of the uptake of smoking by the youth these days, as it influences them into making such a habit. A scientific consensus conducted by a wide range of professional health organizations including the world health organization, National Cancer institute and the US Centers for Disease control and prevention showed that the movies having smoking scenes in it causes youth smoking and is the consistent finding of a dose response relationship, and as with any public health concern which is related to a dose response, the only sensible solution to such problem is lowering the dose, which brings back to the topic of discussion that there should be an adult content rating for movies having tobacco use and on screen smoking in it.

An essay by Simon Chapman and Matthew C. Farrelly published in P LoS Medicine, presents four different arguments against these kinds of proposals. The first argument suggested that these studies which purport such links between the smoking uptake by the youth and the disclosure of scenes relating smoking in the movies does not have control for the possible manipulation of other factors which includes violence, alcohol, coarse language, recreational drug portrayal and sexual content and their relationship with later smoking. The second argument that the claims about the movies smoking disclosure in movies causing an uptake of smoking by the ...