his wife is threatening to ditch him if he doesn’t quit

A few weeks ago we reported on an initiative from the film company Disney which was designed to prevent impressionable young children from being given the message that smoking was cool and hip. The idea was that smoking would not be portrayed in films as good and the lead actors would not light up unless it was 100 percent essential for the script. The more pathetic characters in the films would be smokers so that smoking would be associated with being a loser. It was hoped that other film companies would follow suit and many of them have said that they would do their utmost to make sure that smoking is never portrayed as being a cool thing to try in their films.

Well recently at Ukmedix News we’ve heard about an Indian film called No Smoking. In this film there is a real lot of smoking cigarettes because it is all about a chain smoker! The story is about a man who is sick of his habit and wants to quit. Not only that, but his wife is threatening to ditch him if he doesn’t quit and so he has agreed to go to a special rehabilitation centre to get help.

This posed a bit of a dilemma for the film industry censors in India who have decided to ban the showing of all films which have smoking in them. In this film though the smoking habit is portrayed as extremely stupid and the addictive ability of cigarettes is highlighted greatly. At one point at the beginning of the film the lead actor with a cigarette in his mouth looks at himself in the mirror and says “Nobody tells me what to do”. By the end of the film the same guy is reduced to a gibbering wreck as he begs for a cigarette.

The film censors in India have therefore decided to allow this film to be shown in the hope that it will encourage many young people never to smoke in the first place.