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• Major Government Report Concludes That Tobacco Marketing and Smoking in Movies Promote Youth Smoking 

Leaders from the federal government and the nation's public health community today announced the release of an authoritative National Cancer Institute report that reaches the government's strongest conclusion to date that tobacco marketing and depictions of smoking in movies promote youth smoking. The 684-page report, The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use, presents definitive conclusions that a) tobacco advertising and promotion are causally related to increased tobacco use, and b) exposure to depictions of smoking in movies is causally related to youth smoking initiation.

The report also concludes that mass media campaigns can reduce smoking, especially when combined with other tobacco control strategies. However, youth smoking prevention campaigns sponsored by the tobacco industry have been generally ineffective and may actually have increased youth smoking.

This report provides the most current and comprehensive analysis of more than 1,000 scientific studies on the role of the media in encouraging and discouraging tobacco use. The report is Monograph 19 in the National Cancer Institute's Tobacco Control Monograph series . . .

The editors of the monograph outline several steps that have been proposed to reduce use of the media in promoting tobacco use and increase its use in discouraging tobacco use, including:

-- Impose a comprehensive ban on tobacco advertising and promotion;

-- Adequately fund mass media campaigns and protect them from tobacco industry efforts to impede them;

-- Monitor tobacco industry activities including public relations and advertising expenditures in a changing media environment;

-- Use research to inform tobacco control policy and program decisions;

-- Place anti-tobacco advertisements before films to partially counter the impact of tobacco portrayals in movies; and

-- Increase public awareness of tobacco industry attempts to shut down public health campaigns.

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