Smoking Out the Oscars

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

February 25 -- Just as tinsel town is rolling out the red carpet for the Oscars, health officials are looking to shine an embarrassing spotlight on smoking in youth-rated movies.

County health officials -- who say that smoking is featured in 80 percent of PG-13 movies and 40 percent of PG and G rated movies -- are helping sponsor a series of rolling billboards cruising this week in one location in Santa Monica and two in Los Angeles.

"The Whole World is Watching," and "Keep Smoking Out of Youth Rated Movies." That was the message emblazoned across a two-sided billboard mounted to a flat-bed truck as it circled the streets around the Third Street Promenade.

Anti-smoking billboards circled streets in Santa Monica and Los Angeles this weekend.

Paid for by proposition 99 tobacco tax dollars, the billboards, health officials said, are aimed at showing the effect the movie industry has on children's habits.

"The timing around the Oscars is on purpose," said Linda Aragon, the director of the Tobacco Control and Prevention Program for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.

“We wanted to draw attention to the movie industry and their role in smoking among our youth,” Aragon said.

One main goal of the ad campaign, said Aragon, is to encourage the movie industry to assign an R rating to any movie that shows smoking.

Other goals include showing an anti-smoking ad before any movie that includes smoking, limiting the identification of tobacco products in movies and opening up movie studios financial books to certify they are not receiving monies from tobacco companies, Aragon said.

A 1998 federal settlement bars tobacco companies for paying to have their cigarettes featured in movies, it is difficult to tell if movie studios are complying, experts said.

"Questions have been raised because we don't have access to movie studio financial records," Aragon said.

After a decline in smoking featured in movies since the 1960's, there has been a resurgence in the last decade, according to a University of California San Francisco study.

"We're noticing that the amount of smoking in movies is higher now than in the 1950's," said Aragon.

The study -- conducted by the UCSF's Smoke Free Movies Action Network and funded by the Center for Disease Control -- tracked instances of smoking in kid's rated movies.

Recent movies Aragon cited with smoking include the PG animated hit, "The Incredibles," and the sequel to 102 Dalmatians, as well as the PG-13 football flick, "Friday Night Lights."

Standing on the sidewalk a few feet from the anti-smoking billboard Friday afternoon, Geraldo Vargas lit up a cigarette and commented, "I think they should keep smoking out of G rated movies, but not PG. Those are already rated for parental guidance."

When Vargas learned that the billboard was sponsored by the LA County Department of Health Services and is paid for by the state tobacco tax initiative, he said incredulously, "That's where it (the tax money) is going?"

Gene Williams contributed to this report