I could not help but be angered by the union of Big Tobacco and Hollywood when it comes to subliminal messaging in Hollywood films.

A meta-study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics concludes that viewing movie smoking scenes is a significant factor in smoking among older teens and young adults. In 1999, researchers interviewed thousands of 10- to 14-year-olds, assessing their smoking status and exposure to images of smoking, via movies. Follow-up interviews in 2006 and 2007 determined whether the former non-smokers had taken up the habit and compared their smoking status to their earlier exposure to movie smoking scenes. Those with the highest level of movie smoking exposure were twice as likely to have become established smokers as those with the least amount of exposure, even after controlling for a wide range of other factors.

The next excerpt makes it clear that Big Tobacco’s future depends on marketing to teenagers.

A 2006 study found that in recent years, depictions of smoking have shifted from R-rated to PG-13-rated films, and that major studio pictures account for 90% of movie smoking scenes. The 2006 study authors concluded that major film studios are "delivering the most new adolescent smokers to the tobacco industry."

Lastly I found a even more informative entry in the comments section to the PR Watch post I’ve cited above.

Hollywood studios and tobacco companies began working together in 1927. Two-thirds of top stars in 1930s and 1940s had cigarette endorsement contracts, brokered by their studios in exchange for national print and radio advertising paid for by the tobacco companies. In the 1950s and 1960s, the tobacco industry was a leading owner and sponsor of network TV shows. After tobacco commercials were banned from TV and radio in 1970, the companies launched systematic product placement campaigns involving hundreds of Hollywood films — more than a third of them kid-rated. Today, film studios owned by the best-known media companies still resist effective steps to block tobacco industry influence.

This history is documented in once-secret tobacco industry files uncovered during lawsuits. To learn more about , visit this authoritative UC-San Francisco web site: www.smokefreemovies.ucsf.edu.

And here’s one more from the comments section.

As a former ad exec working on Reynolds’ Camel brand, I was approached by a movie maker to get behind a script financially and shown several ways in which Camel cigs would be integrated into the movie.

My guess is that it was nothing new then. Probably a long established relationship between movie makers and tobacco companies. It doesn’t take a scientist to figure out that the shit works.

Todd Anthony
www.bullshitobserver.com