When classes in our school are asked, "If one hundred adults were in a room at one time, how many of them would be smokers?" Most of the students guess around seventy to seventy-five. A few say ninety! That's just what the tobacco industry wants them to think. After all, children wonder, if smoking is so bad for you, why do so many people do it?

Actually, 75% of the adults in America don't smoke. So why are children under the impression that smoking is so widespread?

Could it be because of the prevalence of smoking on the screen ? Dr. Stan Glanz of the UC San Francisco Medical School found that major movie characters were three times more likely to smoke on screen than the general public.

It is reported that tobacco companies pay large sums of money to get their products seen in movies. Just to name a few:

• $350,000 to have Lark cigarettes appear in the James Bond movie License to Kill
• $42,000 to place Marlboro cigarettes in Superman II
• $30,000 to place Eve cigarettes in Supergirl
• Over $5,000 to have Lucky Strike appear in Beverly Hills Cop
• Sylvester Stallone to use Brown and Williamson products in no less than five feature films for a fee of $500,000.

The tobacco companies obviously know that adolescents are three times more likely to go to the movies than adults and that eight out of ten new smokers are children or adolescents.

There are a lot of good sites on the web where you can learn more about stars smoking on screen. After you visit them, you may want to write to some of the producers and stars to tell them they are helping the tobacco industry to trap children. You can find addresses on our "Resources" page.

Smoking in Movies and TV

Reeling Them In