Smoking kills about 400,000 Americans every year, 47 million people in the U.S still smoke cigarettes and 9/10 started smoking before the age of 18! Here is the question to be asking, if 9/10 of the 47 million smokers in the U.S started before the age of 18 then obviously tobacco companies are targeting young teens and their marketing is definitely working, but how exactly?

Movie characters that smoke are the biggest influence on teens. Think about this for a second, didn’t you at one point think it was cool to smoke? I know I did! At one point I thought it was so cool to smoke that I would only smoke when around people, be it friends or strangers. I would not even think about smoking for days unless I wanted to “Be cool!”, it was my only reason for smoking yet it was all in vain.

Have you watched the movie Blood Diamond? How well is Leonardo Dicaprio’s acting in that movie and how “Cool” does he making smoking look? If you haven’t seen this movie, you must watch it to know what “Smoking ads” in movies look like. Its a great example.

In movies, character’s that smoke portray smoking as “Cool” and “Mature”. This is where teens mainly get influenced. Then what happens after a teenager starts smoking is, they go to their friends and invite them to “being cool”. Teens who have been exposed to a lot of smoking in movies and within a family environment will be more likely to give in to peer pressure.

A recent survey was done by the American Association of Pediatrics to determine exposure to movie smoking in a representative sample of young US adolescents. Their results come as no surprise.

“The 534 movies that were used in the study were mainly rated PG-13 and R. Seventy four percent contained smoking (3830 total smoking occurrences). On average, each movie was seen by 25% of the adolescents surveyed. Viewer ship was higher with increased age and lower for R-rated movies.

Overall, these movies delivered 13.9 billion gross smoking impressions, an average of 665 to each US adolescent aged 10–14 years. Thirty popular movies each delivered 100 million gross smoking impressions. Thirty actors each delivered 50 million smoking impressions, such that just 1.5% of actors delivered one quarter of all character smoking to the adolescent sample.” Read the full article about the study.

Another study at the university of California shows that kids who see a lot of smoking in movies are three times more likely to start smoking than kids who are not exposed to smoking in movies.

Since tobacco companies are not allowed to advertise their products, they have opted for what one can refer to as “Silent but deadly” means by using movie characters that smoke. What better way to advertise smoking to kids and make sure the message gets across.

Movies are a powerful force. It can have such a powerful effect on kids that even good parenting can still not undo the effects. 52% of youth who start smoking are mostly influenced by the movies. These stats speak for themselves, the youth are being targeted no doubt, and it is being done in very subtle ways.

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