Smoking in children's movies angers critics

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Australian public health experts have demanded film classification rules be tightened after it was revealed that more than half the top-grossing movies for young people contain smoking.

Many children's films normalised and even glamourised smoking, the president of the Public Health Association, Mike Daube, said. ''People don't think of cinemas as a venue for cigarette promotion but they are probably now one of the most important vehicles through which smoking is promoted to kids.''

The director of the Classification Board, Donald McDonald, said that it considered community standards on harm caused by "inappropriate" smoking or substance misuse when classifying films.

But Professor Daube said that since research showed repeated exposure to smoking increased the likelihood young people would smoke, the board should consider all smoking harmful for an under-age audience.

"I suspect that the classification board have not moved with the times in terms of community standards on this," he said.

The US government public health agency the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention released a report last week which said 54 per cent of the top-grossing movies of 2009 rated PG-13 contained smoking.

When movies for even younger children were included, 39 per cent contained smoking.

Movies included Disney's A Christmas Carol, Fantastic Mr Fox and Avatar, said the report's co-author, Jonathan Polansky.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine also included smoking. Part of it was filmed in Australia, receiving a 15 per cent government rebate on its costs.

Mr Polansky said governments that are trying to discourage smoking should not give money to such films. "These subsidies are quite important to the studios … they should be harmonised with public health goals," he said.

Young people who were heavily exposed to on-screen smoking were two to three times more likely to begin smoking than those lightly exposed, he said.

The chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, Anne Jones, said tobacco companies had a long history of paying for product placements in children's entertainment. While they denied this continued they were "not an industry that could be trusted".

Ms Jones said Australia should have tougher classification standards, compulsory anti-smoking advertisements before and after movies that contained smoking and should ban government assistance for films with smoking.

The manager of the Tobacco Control Unit of the Cancer Council NSW, Allison Salmon, said it was particularly concerned that smoking was portrayed in movies to a much greater extent than it occurred in real life.

A survey conducted by the Centre for Health Research & Psycho-oncology at the University of Newcastle found 63 per cent of respondents thought anti-smoking ads should be screened before movies containing smoking.

"The public considers smoking in films to be a problem worthy of remedial action," Ms Salmon said.

Mr McDonald said the classification code required the board to protect minors from material likely to cause harm but it was not its role to prevent movies "exploring the spectrum of human behaviour and experience".

- © Fairfax NZ News