Scourge that's lighting up silver screen

By GREG ANSLEY Australia correspondent

CANBERRA - Australian anti-smoking campaigners have joined a growing international outcry over increasing levels of tar on the silver screen.

According to new American research, movies now show more smoking than they did 50 years ago, when twice as many people smoked and tobacco was the height of cool.

The list of stars lighting up on screen includes Australians Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, New Zealand-born Russell Crowe and such other huge names as John Travolta, Pierce Brosnan and Sissy Spacek.

Anti-tobacco group Ash has urged local actors, screen writers, directors and producers to cut the level of smoking in Australian movies - with little success so far - and is lobbying the Government to outlaw any payment by tobacco companies to have cigarettes written into scripts.

Brands such as Marlboro, Camel, Pall Mall and Winston have appeared prominently in major films as diverse as A Beautiful Mind and Men in Black II, and tobacco giant Philip Morris admitted paying to have its brands featured in the James Bond movie Licence to Kill, and in Superman II.

With high rates of teenage smoking - 40,000 children take up the habit every year - and anti-tobacco funding in Australia only one-third that of New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Ireland, Ash also wants more federal money to counter the "glamour" of cigarettes in movies through anti-smoking advertisements at cinemas.

Ash chief executive Anne Jones said Australia should consider an American proposal to place R ratings on films that glamorised smoking.

"This is one of the reasons why so many young people are smoking," she said. "Celebrity smoking has given it the big kick - if you're [seen to be] successful and glamorous and independent and smoke, it's the best you can get out there."

Australian Medical Association president Dr Bill Glasson said that with about 11 depictions of smoking in every hour of a typical film, Australia should set an example to put pressure on Hollywood and other big global movie centres.

"If smoking is glamorised, then people will smoke because they think it's sexy," he said. "If a film character smokes because they are stressed, people will think that smoking is a stress-reliever.

"But smoking kills people."

A study by the University of California's Centre for Tobacco Control, Research and Education of 150 films made between 1950 and 2002 found that on-screen smoking had bounced back from the trough of the early 1980s, when only half as many cigarettes appeared.

It found that despite declining tobacco use and increased public understanding of the dangers of smoking, the frequency of smoking in movies in 2002 was 10.9 incidents an hour - slightly above the 10.7 an hour appearing half a century ago.

Anti-smoking campaigners have been even more alarmed that the trend appears to be accelerating both in box-office hits and in movies made for children.

The US Smoke Free Movies organisation reported that six of the top box-office movies last week glamorised smoking, as did nine of the country's 10 biggest DVD and video rentals.

In the 12 months to the end of May last year 73 per cent of all top grossing films in the US, and 82 per cent of the biggest PG-13s (parental guidance for children under 13), contained tobacco.

Two-thirds of the movies featuring smoking carried ratings suitable for children, and half of all the smoking shots were in children's movies.