lead to a three times greater likelihood of smoking within 30 minutes

New evidence that smoking in films has a direct effect on encouraging audiences to light up has been published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. While it has often been stated using hearsay evidence that smoking in films encourages young impressionable adults to puff away this study actually proves that there is a direct link.

The researchers hailing from the University of California in San Francisco got one hundred regular cigarette smokers between the ages of 18 and 25 to watch either a film with smoking scenes or one without. They carefully monitored the behaviour of the volunteers in a ten minute break during the film and also after the film to establish whether or not smoking was more prevalent with those who had watched the 'smoking film'. Their results showed that the smoking films lead to a three times greater likelihood of smoking within 30 minutes of leaving the film. The researchers also reported that smokers who watched the smoking films were more likely to light up during the ten minute break.

The researchers Dikla Shmueli, Stanton Glantz and Judith Prochaska said that when they adjusted their results to take into account different nicotine addiction levels, gender, marital status, ethnicity and other factors is still showed the smoking in films impacted significantly on subsequent smoking habits. Professor Stanton Glantz from the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at UCSF put it bluntly when he said that if you are trying to quit cigarettes you "should not watch movies with smoking scenes."

The National Cancer Institute, the World Health Organization and many antismoking bodies claim that smoking in films have a direct influence on the initiation of adolescent smoking and following this new study they now have the evidence that they require.

In America there is a Smoke Free Movies Campaign which is trying to get all images of smoking and tobacco in films directed at teenagers to be banned. Some movie production companies such as Disney have already pledged never to use images of smoking in their films.