Does Smoking on TV Influence You?

The Government banned cigarette commercials on television in 1970 after the 1964 Surgeon General’s report found that smoking cigarettes increased your chances of getting lung cancer.  This was a big deal, considering the strong smoking culture in the United States at the time.  However, this ban didn’t stop smoking on television. Forty-years later, characters on television shows continue to smoke. And, what if we told you that teens are one of the primary audiences for some of those shows? Researchers from Columbia University and Legacy (formerly the American Legacy Foundation), an anti-tobacco group that produces the “Truth” anti-smoking ad campaign, teamed up to find out how often tobacco use shows up on TV shows popular with teens.  The shows included: “Gossip Girl,” “Heroes,” “American Dad,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Family Guy,” “House,” and “The Simpsons.” They also looked at reality shows like “America’s Next Top Model” to measure depictions such as smoking, or even showing a pipe or pack of cigarettes on screen. TV Shows Still Smokin’ Researchers watched every episode of the season. Of the 73 episodes in the analysis, 40 percent contained at least one depiction of tobacco (mainly cigarettes), double the rate from a similar study 10 years earlier. In all, there were 271 depictions, which worked out to an average of 4.4 depictions an hour. Published in February 2011, the researchers concluded in their study: Substantial toba...
Source: NIDA Drugs and Health Blog - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: blogs