[C-U Smokefree] Tobacco industry in the movies

[Theotskl at aol.com]

FYI.

Theo Tsoukalas, Ph.D.

The latest SmokeFreeMovies ad ran in today's New York Times (west coast 
edition).

View the ad at http://www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu/ourads/ad_sfm21_nyt.html

Their movie studios deliver 220,000 kids a year to the tobacco industry. They 
could stop it with a phone call. 
Noboyuki Idei, Sony Corporation - 55,000* adolescent smokers delivered to 
U.S. tobacco industry annually by Disney motion pictures. 

Michael Eisner, Disney Company - 66,000* adolescent smokers delivered to U.S. 
tobacco industry annually by Sony motion pictures. 

Richard Parsons, Time Warner - 98,000* adolescent smokers delivered to U.S. 
tobacco industry annually by Warner motion pictures. 







In-Theater Tobacco Impressions (1999-2003)* 
Media company Total tobacco impressions Share of 6-17 impressions
Time Warner 8.1 billion 25%
Disney 5.4 billion 17%
Sony 4.4 billion 14%
Universal 3.8 billion 11%
Viacom 3.4 billion 10%
News Corp. 3.1 billion 9%
MGM 1.6 billion 5%
Dreamworks 1.4 billion 4%
All others 1.4 billion 4%


Studios or parent companies ranked by the number of estimated in-theater 
tobacco impressions delivered to audiences of all ages, and by their share of all 
in-theater tobacco impressions delivered to moviegoers ages 6-17. 





Major studios, some with a documented prior history of payoffs from the 
tobacco industry, are now responsible for delivering at least half of all new young 
smokers in the U.S. 

Yet so far, the studios' lobbying organization, the MPAA, has refused to give 
future on-screen tobacco use an "R" age-classification, as leading health 
advocates recommend. 

The "R," while voluntary, would create an incentive for producers to avoid 
smoking in films intended for younger audiences, just as they now temper raw 
language and violence. 

Filmmakers would remain free to include smoking in any movies they choose. 
But this non-intrusive rating change would effectively reduce kids' exposure to 
on-screen smoking, and subsequent addiction, by an estimated 60%. 

The MPAA's stonewalling means little. After all, the major studios really 
call the shots on industry policy. And the major studios' top managers answer to 
others even more powerful - the chairs and CEOs of the giant media 
corporations that own them. 

The studios, perhaps uncertain of their potential liability, are frozen in 
the face of a public health threat of historic magnitude. Genuine leadership at 
the highest corporate level is now required to use the "R" to reduce kids' 
exposure to on-screen smoking, permanently, industrywide. 

No other health challenge in the U.S. has such a ready answer. Three men can 
pull out their phones, voice-dial their studio chiefs, and save 50,000 lives a 
year. How many more movies? How many more years? How many more hundreds of 
thousands of kids? 





Senators Urge Action at Hearings on Capitol Hill
U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Tuesday, May 11, 2004 

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada): "Why is it okay to modify [the rating system] 
for nudity, for language, but not okay to modify it for tobacco, the number one 
preventable health problem we have in this country?" 

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon): "The ball is in your court, Mr. Valenti. I 
guarantee you, if something isn't done by the industry, there are certainly going to 
be efforts [by lawmakers]." 







Warner Bros. Movies: Licensed to Kill in Africa 

In 2002, British American Tobacco (BAT) licensed four Warner Bros. movies for 
a twelve-week, six-city "cinema tour" promoting its Rothmans cigarettes in 
Nigeria: 

Collateral Damage - Arnold Schwarzenegger
Ocean's 11 - George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt, Julia 
Roberts
Romeo Must Die - Jet Li
Showtime - Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy 

Challenged by Nigerian and U.S. health advocates, in January 2003 Warner said 
that the Films had been pirated and BAT would be told to cease and desist. 
But in March 2003, the L.A. Times reported that British American Tobacco had in 
fact licensed the Films from Warner's South African distributor, Warner Nu 
Metro. 

Only after health advocates launched faxes to Warner Bros.' Barry Meyer did 
Warner agree to donate 50% of the money it got from BAT to Nigerian tobacco 
prevention groups and 50% to UNICEF. (In November 2003, Nigerian NGOs received 
$5,000; the UNICEF donation has not been confirmed.) However, Time Warner 
refused to pledge publicly that it would not license its Films to tobacco companies 
and their agents again. 





Contact the media CEOs at SmokeFreeMovies.ucsf.edu 

The R-rating for tobacco use on screen is endorsed by the World Health 
Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, American 
Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Los Angeles County Department 
of Health Services, Society for Adolescent Medicine, and other public health 
authorities. Smoke Free Movies is a project of Stanton Glantz, PhD, Director, 
UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. To join the campaign, 
visit our website or write us: Smoke Free Movies, UCSF School of Medicine, San 
Francisco, CA 94143-1390. *Estimates based on epidemiological studies of the 
effect smoking in movies has on adolescents, coupled with tobacco content 
analysis and box ofFice data for each studio's Films 1999-2003. View step-by-step 
calculations at SmokeFreeMovies.ucsf.edu/problem/new_smokers. 

PMC ® www.publicmediacenter.org 

PMC 
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