MPAA Will Get Tougher with Smoking in Films

Smoking will become a factor of rating decision by the Motion Picture Association of America, along with violence, language, nudity, drug abuse and other elements.

MPAA announced today that smoking will be considered when rating movies and "depictions that glamorize smoking or movies that feature pervasive smoking outside of an historic or other mitigating context may receive a higher rating."

After years of pressure from advocacy groups, MPAA finally decided to endorse some of their demands. "There is broad awareness of smoking as a unique public health concern due to nicotine's highly addictive nature, and no parent wants their child to take up the habit," MPAA Chief Executive Dan Glickman said. "The appropriate response of the rating system is to give more information to parents on this issue."

Recently a group of 32 state attorney generals publicly called for an action from MPAA after recommendations from the Harvard School of Public Health. Glickman had asked the school last fall to study the effect of smoking in movies. Their findings, presented to the MPAA in February, found that urgent action was needed.

A Research published this month by the Dartmouth Medical School found that 74 percent of 534 recent box-office hit movies contained smoking and many of the movies were rated PG-13. The researchers found that teenagers who had seen smoking in films were nearly twice as likely to have tried cigarettes as those who saw the least amount of on-screen smoking.