Who can forget Humphrey Bogart lighting up in the film Casablanca...

Let’s face it, when you light up a cigarette you can actually look quite cool and this is why the vast majority of young smokers start in the first place. Who can forget Humphrey Bogart lighting up in the film Casablanca and not failed to be impressed by his smooth talking demeanor.  The message that smoking is cool is one that has been promoted in films coming out of Hollywood for decades and many people think that one of the best ways to stop young people smoking is to prevent the lead actor or actress in a film from lighting up at any time.

Well the good news is that the Walt Disney Company has made a pledge to try and eliminate all cigarette smoking from their films. They said that the family movies that come out of the Disney studio will not show any cigarette smoking and the two other movie companies Touchstone and Miramax both said that they would try very hard to discourage any scenes in which smoking is present. Disney also said that in the films where there would be some scenes with smoking they would include special anti smoking adverts to be shown before the film. It is hoped that soon all movie companies will follow suit and copy the example set by Disney.

Obviously it will be difficult not to include any smoking characters in some films in order to portray certain characters as they really are but the most important thing is that the movie companies are not seem to glamorise smoking and to make the “cool” people in the film smoke. Movie companies could even make the pathetic and stupid people in the movie smoke which would help young people nurture the perception that smoking is not cool but in fact pretty sad.