Hollywood continues to glamorise smoking

Last week, we asked what our readers thought about the smoking scenes in the 3D Avatar and in movies in general.

Michelle Delaney, Irish, Bangkok

As a firm anti-smoker I'm usually first to be up-in-arms on spotting a sneaky cigarette displayed anywhere in the mass media.


The workplace smoking ban was brought into my home country in 2004 and since then most smokers and non-smokers alike in Ireland consider indoor smoking pretty unacceptable.

I have to admit however, when asked about the smoking scenes in Avatar it took me a moment to even remember any - perhaps more a reflection of the stunning visual and technical wizardry of the movie than anything else.

When I did recall Weaver's chain-smoking character, I connected it with an effort to ease her anxiety and amplify a certain masculinity in her character, rather than endear her to viewers as sultry or cool.

I don't believe the act of smoking symbolised aspects of Weaver's character that many female movie viewers would necessarily aspire to.

Is the botanist character considered an icon or sex symbol to the thousands of young impressionable Avatar fans?

Are movie-goers racing out to light up their first cigarettes after seeing Dr Grace in action?

I doubt it.

To see princess Neytiri or the rugged Jake Sully lighting up on our screens - now that probably would have given me enough fuel to begin a rant at James Cameron about his social responsibility to his young Avatarian apostles.

Steve Turner, British, London

The film, Avatar, is a phenomenal success.

The enormous production costs seem to be paying off, with the film already exceeding US$2billion in ticket sales in just the few weeks since its release.

But, within this modern science fiction film there is an old practise of product placement that one would associate with the technologies of the last century, and shows a practise that is now illegal in many of the countries where the film is being shown - smoking in the work-place.

There are two scenes where the character played by Sigourney Weaver smokes nervously in the laboratory, during work, among her colleagues.

Tobacco and smoking in films is an old practise, started before there was a full understanding of the hazards of tobacco and at a time when it could be seen as a realistic reflection of the society or characters that were being portrayed in the films.

But in the late 20th century and certainly the first ten years of the 21st, the health implications of smoking are well known.

Also well known are the skilful ways in which tobacco companies, in many countries of the world denied the opportunity to advertise their product, are using opportunities such as product placement to maintain the profile of smoking in general and, if possible, to promote specific brands.

What makes a multi-billion dollar global company promote a product that is responsible for 5 million deaths per year?

It remains to be asked of the film's director and producers, among the many questions about style, technology, ground-breaking effects, science-fiction story lines and exceptional make-up skills: how much money were they paid to place this ludicrous but deadly harmful event - harmful to real people, not fictional movie characters - in their film?

Abu Ebrahimsa, Malaysian, London

They promote a habit that has been scientifically proven to be detrimental to your health.

Film-makers just try and portray smoking as a 'hip', 'cool', 'fun' habit and forget the medical consequences of having such both a harmful and costly habit.

Yes there is the corporate social responsibility on part of the film makers to actively downplay smoking but even though there is a financial incentive to promote certain brands, is it not for the audience and public to realise what is good/bad and downright wrong.

What the Vietnamese Government doing is good but is merely a short-term solution to a long- term problem.

What governments need to do is to educate their population, as with education comes knowledge and hence realisation what is good or bad.

Another issue, if you look at it from the government's point of view, is that they receive tax revenue by promoting this product which 'developing' countries need so where would they get that extra income?

Even in the most sophisticated, educated rich countries like the UK and the US, people smoke and there were ads and TV ads, so really education and awareness is a key way to tackle this problem compared to censorship.

N.C. Reconsiders Cigarette Tax Stamps

North Carolina may bring back its state cigarette tax stamp, which has been out of use for 17 years, the Winston-Salem Journal reports. Today, a House committee on revenue laws meets to discuss the tax stamp.

A tax stamp would counter cigarette smuggling and selling cigarette cartons purchased in North Carolina in other states for a big profit. Analysts predict the stamp could bring in an annual $1 million in excise-tax funds.

In 1993, the General Assembly discontinued the stamp because the revenue generated by the tax wasn’t enough to justify the administrative, enforcement and logistics of the stamp program. With no tax stamp on North Carolina cigarettes, convenience stores, manufacturers and tobacco wholesalers have seen an increasing number of smokers who make the state a destination point for picking up cheaper cigarettes.

“This is a smuggler’s dream, what they live for,” said Jeff Lenard, NACS spokesman. “Price disparities like these are what make it worth selling cigarettes out of duffle bags and in alleyways.”

A cigarette tax stamp would make counterfeiting harder and make tracking and tracing contraband cigarettes easier. “There’s really no way to police the sales now, so having a stamp would help improve the playing field and reduce the impact on our profits from cigarettes sold in South Carolina being smuggled here,” said Rodney Allen, an owner of R&R Distribution.

Currently, only North Dakota, North Carolina and South Carolina do not have cigarette tax stamps.

Study Shows Cigarette Smoking a Risk Factor for Alzheimer's Disease

A UCSF analysis of published studies on the relationship between Alzheimer’s disease and smoking indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk factor for the disease. After controlling for study design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, the UCSF research team also found an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies. Industry-affiliated studies indicated that smoking protects against the development of AD, while independent studies showed that smoking increased the risk of developing the disease.
Study findings were published online today in the January issue (19:2) of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease. An abstract of the paper is available at the link below.
“For many years, published studies and popular media have perpetuated the myth that smoking is protective against the development of AD. The disease’s impact on quality of life and health care costs continues to rise. It is therefore critical that we better understand its causes, in particular, the role of cigarette smoking,” said Janine K. Cataldo, PhD, RN, assistant professor in the UCSF School of Nursing and lead author of the study.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 5.3 million Americans currently have the disease, and that number will escalate rapidly as the baby boom generation ages. AD also triples health care costs for Americans aged 65 and older, the organization states.
The UCSF team reviewed 43 published studies from 1984 to 2007. Authors of one-fourth of the studies had an affiliation with the tobacco industry.
The UCSF team determined that the average risk of a smoker developing AD, based on studies without tobacco industry affiliation, was estimated to be 1.72, meaning that smoking nearly doubled the risk of AD. In contrast, the team found that studies authored by individuals with tobacco industry affiliations, showed a risk factor of .86 (less than one), suggesting that smoking protects against AD. When all studies were considered together, the risk factor for developing AD from smoking was essentially neutral at a statistically insignificant 1.05.
Previous reviews of the association between smoking and AD have not controlled for study design and author affiliation with the tobacco industry, according to Cataldo. To determine if study authors had connections to the tobacco industry, the UCSF team analyzed 877 previously secret tobacco industry documents.
The researchers used an inclusive definition of “tobacco industry affiliation” and examined authors’ current or past funding, employment, paid consultation, and collaboration or co-authorship on a study with someone who had current or previous tobacco industry funding within 10 years of publication.
“We know that industry-sponsored research is more likely to reach conclusions favorable to the sponsor,” said Stanton A. Glantz, PhD, of the UCSF Department of Medicine and a study co-author. “Our findings point to the ongoing corrosive nature of tobacco industry funding and point to the need for academic institutions to decline tobacco industry funding to protect the research process.”
Judith J. Prochaska, PhD, MPH, of the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, also is a co-author. The team’s research was supported by grants from the California Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care.

Why Tanning Beds Are the Cigarettes of Our Age

When we first launched Cosmopolitan's Practice Safe Sun (PSS) campaign in 2006, it was in response to some shocking statistics I'd just learned: Melanoma had become the second most frequently reported cancer in women in their 20s. It was only later, though, that I began to hear the stories behind the stats, and they've been heartbreaking: Women in their 20s and 30s having multiple and disfiguring surgeries to remove the cancer and many dying of the disease. I learned this week about a young mother who died of melanoma five months after her twins were born. So often the common denominator among these women is that they loved to be tan--from the sun and often from tanning beds as well.
These stories have kept us highly motivated at Cosmo to make women aware of the dangers of both outdoor and indoor tanning. This week we took Cosmo's PSS initiative to a new level. We hosted a press conference in our offices at which Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Congressman Charlie Dent (R-PA) announced their plans to introduce The Tanning Bed Cancer Control Act, a key piece of bipartisan legislation that would expand federal regulation of tanning beds with the aim of limiting the strength of the UV rays emitted by tanning beds and the time consumers may be exposed to harmful radiation.
If you have any doubts about how dangerous beds are, consider the announcement made in July by the World Health Organization. They described tanning beds as definitely carcinogenic--putting them in the same category as cigarettes, asbestos, and uranium. If you tan indoors before age 30, your skin cancer risk rises by 75 percent (and nearly 70 percent of customers are young women). When we did an undercover report with ABC's 20/20, we found tanning salons routinely misrepresented the risks.
But at the same time that the evidence against tanning has become more clear, we've seen the continuing glorification of the tan in popular culture. Just check out the pervasive reality series, Jersey Shore. The daily routine is "GTL"--gym, tanning, laundry.
As Representative Maloney said when she introduced this new bill, tanning beds are the cigarettes of our age. We owe it to everyone, particularly to young women, to make sure that the risks of tanning are clearly communicated and understood and that tanning beds are regulated as tightly as devices with their risk-profile merit. Please write your congressperson and let him or her know you support this legislation.
And if you use a tanning bed, please stop. Now.

Cigarette Makers Ask to Block Ruling in 4,000 Cases

Altria Group Inc.’s Philip Morris USA unit and other U.S. cigarette makers asked a federal appeals court to block federal trial courts from applying a 2006 Florida decision they claim would deprive them of a fair trial in thousands of death and injury suits in the state.
The companies argue that a series of factual findings endorsed by the Florida Supreme Court in a 2006 decision - including that the companies sold defective products, that they conspired to hide information about the health effects of smoking and that they made false statements about their products - can’t fairly be applied in any of 4,000 cases against them in Florida federal court.
The companies claim that applying the 2006 ruling, which came in the Florida’s “Engle” tobacco class action, ‘would compromise an arbitrary deprivation of the defendants’ federal due process rights,” as a lower judge ruled in August 2008.
The plaintiffs, smokers and their families who are suing the cigarette makers individually, claim the findings are based on ample evidence. They argue that the federal courts are required to apply state law in the cases and can’t review the state supreme court’s decision. A decision in the smokers’ favor would make it easier for smokers to win verdicts in the cases.
In Florida state courts, which instruct jurors on the factual findings endorsed by the state Supreme Court, smokers have won several of the post-Engle cases that have gone to trial. These include a $30 million verdict against Reynolds and an $8 million verdict against Philip Morris. The cases are being appealed.
Florida Smoker
The Engle case was filed in 1994 and named after a Florida smoker named Howard Engle who was the lead plaintiff. After more than a decade of litigation in the Florida courts, the Florida Supreme Court in 2006 rejected a $145 billion punitive damage verdict in the case and ruled that it couldn’t continue as a class action on behalf of smokers statewide who were addicted to nicotine and developed cancer or other smoking-related illnesses.
At the same time, Florida’s high court upheld a series of factual findings made by a Miami jury in the case, and said they would apply in all of the individual suits filed by smokers who had been part of the Engle class. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Specify the Defects
In the appeal today in Atlanta federal court, the companies aren’t challenging findings by the Engle jury, upheld by the Florida Supreme Court, that smoking is addictive and that it can cause illnesses including cancer, emphysema and heart disease.
“The complaints allege that the defendants were negligent and that they sold defective cigarettes,” said Andrew Frey, a lawyer for the cigarette makers. “Our position is that you have to specify the particular respect in which the product was defective, the particular respect in which the defendant was negligent.” Samuel Issacharoff, who argued the smokers’ case, told the judges that the Florida federal courts should follow the state supreme court and permit the findings to be used as they apply in individual cases. “Some of them may be useless,” said Issacharoff. “Some of them may simply streamline the cases.”
The three judges on the panel questioned the lawyers about the extent to which the Engle findings can be used by federal courts trying the cases. Each of the judges suggested the findings may be used to some extent.
Reynolds, Lorillard
“I promise you, you’re not going to get an opinion that says ‘the district court opinion is affirmed for the reasons set out in the opinion below,’” said Circuit Judge Ed Carnes.
The judges didn’t say when they will rule in the case.
In addition to Richmond, Virginia-based Phillip Morris, the biggest U.S. cigarette maker, the companies in the case include No. 2 R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., a unit of Reynolds American Inc. and No. 3 Lorillard Tobacco, a unit of Lorillard Inc.
The 4,000 cases, along with about 4,000 in Florida state courts, were filed after the 2006 ruling. In August, U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger in Jacksonville, Florida, ruled that the factual findings can’t be used in the federal trials and certified the case for immediate appeal.