Movies with scenes where actors are surrounded by the clouds of cigarette smoke are decreasing, even if it doesn’t happen as the federal government and some other anti-smoking organizations would like.

Federal health officials are worried that such scenes will influence a huge number of adolescent audiences to pick this harmful habit. After many years of pressure from anti-smoking advocates, the film industry is starting to react to this pressure.

A study of tobacco use in U.S block busters from 1991 to 2009 found that tobacco onscreen use increased steadily after the Master Settlement Agreement was adopted in 1998 by 46 state attorneys general and U.S. tobacco manufacturers in order to settle various tobacco lawsuits. Thus smoking in movies in 2005 constituted 3,967 scenes but since has lowered 49% to 1,935 in 2009, according to a research conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It is a rather favorable trend. It shows that when Hollywood becomes aware of a particular problem, they can fix it,” stated James D. Sargent, professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.

Smoking in movies is still prevalent, for example we may observe Sigourney Weaver chain-smoking in “Avatar” or Robert Pattinson puffing on a cigarette in “Remember Me. Aproximately half of the nation’s 2009 top-grossing films contained tobacco scenes, including 54% of popular PG-13 movies, according to the CDC study conducted in August.

Those teenagers who see smoking scenes are up to 3 times more likely to smoke than those don’t see them. According to the National Cancer Institute nearly 157,300 people in the U.S. will die of lung cancer this year.

The CDC calls on the Motion Picture Assn. of America Inc., which controls the movie rating system, to give an “R” rating to any film that will have tobacco scenes. Thus it will mean that children under 17 and younger shouldn’t see the movie unless accompanied by an adult.

Tobacco use in movies is one of many factors considered in rating system, according to MPAA. “Since May 2007, when MPAA began to use smoking in its rating criteria, about 73% of movies with even a short smoking scenes are rated R; 21% are PG-13; and 6% are PG. Some studios even have their own rules restricting or eliminating tobacco use in films marketed to youth, stated Howard Gantman, the MPAA’s vice president of corporate communications.

“The rating system was specially designed for parents in order to inform them if a movie is appropriate for their children or not,” Kori Titus, chief executive officer of the Breathe California chapter, declared.

By Sara Norton, Staff Writer. Copyright © 2010 Cigarette-Store.org. All rights reserved.