May 31st is World No Tobacco Day: Thumbs-down to Smoking in Movies! Thumbs-up for BC’s NRT Subsidies!
Within the health promotion community, there is no greater scourge than tobacco. The reason being that smoking is the leading cause of preventable death.
Over the years, BC and Canada have made tremendous gains in de-normalizing tobacco use through education, regulation and taxation. And we have seen smoking rates creeping down – slowly and steadily over the decades. In 1965 50% of Canadian adults smoked and in 2009 this number was reduced to 17.5% (15% in BC).
Despite this remarkable progress health promotion advocates continue to be concerned about the smoking rate of young adults – which at 23% is much higher than the national average for everyone over 15. Many health promotion organizations are worried that tobacco companies are investing in marketing tobacco products to youth and young adults.
In fact, a report by Physicians for a Smoke-Free Canada estimates that 44% of 15-19 year old smokers were influenced to start by smoking in movies (including brand and product placement). Sadly, they also estimate that 43,000 of those Canadian teens will dies prematurely. This has prompted BCAHL to advocate for policies to close this advertising channel. In BCAHL’s Healthy Families Agenda, we recommend the following:
- Make youth related films with tobacco imagery ineligible for provincial film subsidies.
- Provincial ratings should make tobacco imagery a criteria for 18A classification, with the exception of depictions of historical figures and unambiguous depictions of the dire health consequences of tobacco use.
BCAHL hopes that we can get policy makers in Victoria to give smoking in movies a thumbs-down. We certainly are happy to give them a thumbs-up for their recent decision to subsidize nicotine replacement therapies.
Rita Koutsodimos
Manager, Advocacy & Communications
