Smoking in the Movies

The American Medical Association Alliance wants any movie with scenes that show people smoking to be given an R rating.

I'll confess to having mixed feelings about this. For many years, I was a smoker. Two years ago, for mostly personal reasons (which I do not wish to discuss here), I gave it up. So I feel that I can sympathize with both sides.

You can make the case that depictions in the movies of certain activities deserve an R rating because those activities are illegal. Most violent acts, for example (and I say "most" because there may be exceptions — and, by the way, boxing movies are in an entirely different category and thus part of an entirely different conversation), are illegal, but not all films that include violence are restricted.

Clearly, smoking is not a healthy activity, but it is a legal one.

Of course, sex is legal, too, but admission to films in which naked bodies can be seen usually is restricted as a means of protecting young people. Whether such restrictions have kept any young people from following up on their normal sexual curiosity is open to debate.

The idea behind ratings is to help parents decide whether a particular film is suitable for their children. But I would argue that the ratings themselves are too vague.

When I was a teenager and I saw that a film was rated R, it never occurred to me that it might be because of the language the characters used (I figured I had heard it all from people my own age, even younger) or because of the substances the characters consumed (I had seen adults, as well as people my own age, consuming legal and illegal substances) or because one or more of the characters got punched, shot or stabbed.

I figured it was because nudity could be seen. When I was a teenager, I never expected to see nudity, even briefly, in a PG movie — and I remember being mildly shocked, in 1975, when I saw brief nudity in a PG movie called "Smile," which was a comedy about the kind of community–sponsored beauty pageants that were popular in those days.

Things don't seem to have changed much. The top–grossing film last year, "The Dark Knight," was given a PG–13 rating. It had plenty of scenes in which violence was implied. Drug use was implied. Sex was implied. The film wasn't graphic, but it was intense.

Likewise, the second highest–grossing film of 2008, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," was rated PG–13. There was plenty of violence in the film, although it wasn't always caused by the humans, but it was more explicit than the violence in "The Dark Knight." Profanity was brief. So was substance consumption. I recall no nudity, only sexual innuendo.

Certainly, there are some stories that can't be told honestly unless smoking is included. Typically, those movies are historical films, dealing with times when less was known about the effects of smoking and tobacco consumption was far more extensive than it is today.

One such story is "Good Night and Good Luck," which deals with an important period in modern American history. The central character, Edward R. Murrow, was a heavy smoker. His story cannot be told honestly unless he is shown smoking. That film was rated PG.

Another historical film, Oliver Stone's "JFK," shows many investigators smoking. The year of President Kennedy's assassination was the year before the surgeon general first reported a link between smoking and cancer. If you look at film footage from 1963, you'll see many people smoking.

"JFK" was rated R — but not because of smoking.

There's no doubt, though, that children emulate what they see, whether it's behavior in the movies or in their real lives. And I applaud those who want to limit their exposure to smoking in the movies.

But I think the entire ratings system should be overhauled. If a film is going to be rated R, adults deserve to know why it received that rating. Was it because of the violence? Was it due to depictions of drug use? Was it profanity? Was it nudity? Was it smoking?

The current ratings system simply doesn't provide enough information.

And, while we're taking steps to discourage exposure to smoking in the movies, it would be a good idea to revisit the idea of banning candy cigarettes as well. It is my understanding that attempts were made to do just that in 1970 and 1991, but they failed.

Recent research indicates that candy cigarettes desensitize children to the hazards of smoking and makes them more likely to smoke real cigarettes when they get older. What's more, it seems to me that consuming candy cigarettes must contribute to the obesity problem in America.

Thus, banning them from the market would benefit long–term public health in a couple of ways.