Do movies cause smoking? Snuffing out another nanny state myth.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob

IN THE 2005 movie The Jacket, Kelly Lynch plays a drunk who burns to death after falling asleep while smoking. According to the activists who object to cinematic smoking, Lynch's character is part of an insidious plot to lure children into the habit by making it seem cool and glamorous.

The movie research cited by anti-smoking activists typically defines pro-tobacco messages broadly enough to include all instances of smoking, actual or implied, along with discussions of tobacco and glimpses of cigarette logos, lighters, or ashtrays. A new study takes a more discriminating approach, looking at the behavior and characteristics of the leading characters in 447 popular films released since 1990 and comes to some rather different conclusions.

Anti-smoking activists assert that smoking is more common in movies than it is in real life. The new study, reported in the August issue of the medical journal Chest, found that, overall, "contemporary American movies do not have a higher prevalence of smoking than the general U.S. population." The activists complain that movies put cigarettes in the hands of attractive protagonists and link smoking to success and affluence. The Chest study found that "bad guys" were more likely to smoke than "good guys" and that, as in real life, smoking was associated with lower socioeconomic status.

"Most investigators have concluded that smoking is portrayed as glamorous and positive, but our study shows that the exact opposite is true," says lead author Karan Omidvari, a physician at St. Michael's Medical Center in Newark. Likewise, there was no evidence to support the idea that movie studios conspire with tobacco companies to target women or minorities.

Having shown that the indictment of Hollywood for pushing cigarettes is based largely on weak studies and loose talk, Omidvari and his colleagues were quick to add that they nevertheless object to smoking in movies. According to Robert McCaffree, president of the foundation that publishes Chest, the study "emphasizes the need for change in this area, including increasing anti-tobacco messages in coming attractions and films."

Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking activist who was involved in much of the research debunked by Omidvari's study, has a different solution in mind: a mandatory R rating for movies that include smoking. Last fall his Smoke Free Movies campaign took out full-page ads in The New Fork Times and other publications claiming that adopting this policy...