Smoking in films: 'experts' call for age classification to be raised to 18
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 at 4:25 Another British university has jumped on the anti-smoking bandwagon.
Researchers at Bristol University say that teenagers who watch films showing actors smoking are more likely to take it up.
Dr Andrea Waylen, who led the research, has called for the age classificition for films that feature smoking to be raised to 18, arguing that it would lower youth smoking rates.
The UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies has written to the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) asking it to do just this to protect children from "particularly harmful imagery".
I gave them this quote:
"The idea that films need to be reclassified in order to create a utopian, smoke-free world for older children is not only patronising, it is completely unnecessary.
"Today you would be hard-pressed to find a leading character who smokes in any top 10 box office movie.
"What next? Should government reclassify films that feature fat people as well in case they are bad role models?
"We go to the cinema to escape from the nanny state. The tobacco control industry should butt out and take its authoritarian agenda elsewhere."
Reader Comments (10)
Aye....The Cameroons are just as bad as the last lot are they not ?
'Today' is interviewing John Britten and Rebecca O'Brien as we speak with John Britten uttering the immortal statement that we shouldn't bother with pesky evidence but should do the common sense thing and protect children (Evan Davis had already pointed out that the research findings didn't show a causal relationship). Britten said that, of course, they don't advocate banning smoling in films but just reclassification because smoking shouldn't be glamorised. Presumably children seeing smoking in the streets isn't glamorous because we smokers are all ugly losers in TC's eyes. Time to dust off the cig case...
Have to say I was astonished that Evan Davis highlighted the lack of evidence - must be a first for the Beeb.
Bristol's involvement in this agenda is no great surprise: http://www.ukctcs.org/ukctcs/otherukphcentres.aspx
Of course killing, maiming and shooting are OK in films and cartoons because most people can distinguish between real life and fantasy. Not when it comes to smoking though.
With smokers turfed out onto the street it seems that children and youngsters see more people smoking post ban than before. Such is the double speak of tobacco control.
Where were Liverpool Uni? I mean the Stanton Glantz did visit Liverpool to promote this a couple of years ago http://www.smokefreeliverpool.com/
Mind you if you click on the link that says "If you agree that young people should be protected from the potentially deadly influence of smoking in films, please go to www.liverpool.gov.uk/smokinginfilms/ and have your say" - you get a 404!
Well done Evan Davis - a very clever man, who has good reason for being sympathetic to the concept of personal choice.
Dr Andrea Waylen from the School of Oral and Dental Sciences has been awarded £232,286 as an NIHR RfPB grant to develop a Healthtalkonline website
Freeloader comes to mind...
Meanwhile Harry Phibbs writes in the daily mail,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2039650/Sinister-thought-control-anti-smoking-lobby.html
Sinister thought control of the anti smoking lobby
True, Evan Davies was surprisingly fair-minded for a Beeboid, but there wasn't an inkling of disagreement when the TC loony talked about smoking "not being normal behaviour" (tell that to the 28% in the UK who smoke!) or when same loony seemed to think it inconceivable that in 150 years (in "Avatar") that people would still choose to do something that people currently choose to do in their millions. Funny, whenever I read Shakespeare I realise that people don't really change that much. So why we would all be brainwashed puritans in 150 years is beyond me. Still, given the response such stories commonly get from readers in Newspaper Comments sections, it seems all those millions being spent on denormalisation are just being wasted. Just look at this story in the Mail, hardly the most smoker-friendly paper out there.
Basically, spot the (very few) antis by the red arrows....