More than 200 teen activists from Reality Check, including Medina-area residents, converged June 1 in New York City to demand that new movies with smoking and tobacco images be rated “R.”
Studies by the University of California at San Francisco show that smoking in movies is the most powerful pro-tobacco influence on kids today. Fifty-two percent of new teen smokers start because of what they have seen on movie screens.
“Tobacco use in kids’ movies is a problem,” said Desiree Greenwood, student at Clifford Wise Middle School. “Kids don’t always see the negative effects smoking can have. A lot of movies show a rich, good-looking or cool person smoking,” she said. “Young viewers think that they can be like that if they smoke. I would like to help my peers from being tempted to smoke by telling them how they’re being manipulated by tobacco companies.”
Greenwood and three students from Medina High School, Bethany McAvoy, Ashley Mendiha and Marley Osgood, represented Orleans County at this rally.
Reality Check youth began their day at 7:30 a.m. outside the studios of “Today,” “Good Morning America” and “The Early Show.” Following a 10 a.m. news conference, they visited SONY, Viacom, New Corp. and Time Warner to do street marketing and leave materials behind regarding this important health issue.
They don’t stand alone in their fight. Speakers at the news conference included New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Richard F. Daines; Barbara Zolty, policy officer of the World Health Organization’s Tobacco Free Initiative; Dr. Stanton Glantz, professor at the University of California; and Christine Morrison, senior tobacco counsel of the New York state Attorney General’s Office.
“Hollywood has a long-documented history of promoting the use of tobacco on the big screen,” Glantz said. “In 2008 alone, PG-13 films delivered 11.7 billion tobacco impressions. In order to save hundreds of thousands of lives, there needs to be an industry-wide solution, including an R-rating for smoking, to achieve substantial, permanent reductions in dangerous youth exposure to on-screen smoking.”
Reality Check is a youth-led, adult-supported anti-tobacco action program of the state Tobacco Control Program. The Genesee/Orleans chapter is administered by the Genesee County Youth Bureau through a grant from the state health department.
