Letters

Measures to reduce smoking in films should penalise film and tobacco industries

EDITORBy looking at adolescents Sargent et al studied the effect that seeing tobacco use in films had on their trying smoking.¹ So many issues are not accounted for in this study that to base sweeping legislative proposals on its findings would be unwise.

For one thing, the correlation that the authors found may operate in reverse (that is, teenage smokers are more likely than non-smokers to favour a variety of passive or thrill seeking behaviours, of which greater patronage of films depicting heavy smoking is only one). In addition, this behaviour is mediated by more important variables (older and poorer youths both smoke more and have attended more of the types of films in which smoking is prevalent).

Evidence for this counter-hypothesis is seen in the study's finding that the odds ratio for smoking in the youths most exposed to films dropped dramatically, from 8.8 to 2.7, when selected sociopersonal variables were controlled for. This suggests that entering additional sociopersonal variables would further reduce or negate the findings.

Importantly, even though an overly broad measure (ever tried smoking) was used, two thirds of youths exposed to even the heaviest depictions of smoking did not try cigarettes once. The authors acknowledge that their findings are preliminary and do not show that films cause smoking by teenagers.

The findings do not justify the proposal by Dr Stanton Glantz and lobby groups such as Action on Smoking and Health for legal restrictions to stop youths watching films depicting smoking. Setting age limits for such films is too severe a curtailment of young people's basic right to participate in their culture.

Unfortunately, quick fix censorship and schemes setting age limits typically grab American policymakers' attention while proving woefully ineffectual and distracting from effective, politically difficult measures. Most teenagers who smoke come from families and communities in which adults smoke, and the most effective policies to curtail smoking necessitate raising tobacco taxes and restricting smoking by adults.

Dr Glantz has been a rare voice of reason in the otherwise dismal debate on tobacco in the United States, and his concern over the relation between film makers and the promotion of tobacco products is well founded. But I ask that he reconsider the notion of punishing adolescents en masse by restricting them from attending films and, instead, propose measures that directly and exclusively penalise the film and tobacco industries at fault.

Mike Males, instructor. 
Sociology Department, University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95061-7842, USA mmales{at}earthlink.net