Media and smoking

DEFINITION: The depiction of smoking in film, television, and news programs powerfully shapes attitudes and beliefs about smoking. This depiction significantly affects individual decisions about whether to smoke.

Smoking in Film

The American public takes for granted that smoking is likely in R-rated films, but many have found it difficult to justify smoking scenes in films rated G, PG, or PG-13, given that minors make up the most likely audience for these films. In 2007, after decades of prompting by antismoking activists, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) acquiesced and said that it would take into account during the rating process all superfluous smoking scenes, those scenes deemed unnecessary in creating historical authenticity or in the telling of the film’s narrative. Regardless, the MPAA has still been criticized by parents and antismoking activists for not taking smoking in films and its negative influence on young people more seriously, and the controversy surrounding smoking on film (and its influence on minors) continued into the next decade. In 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that youth-rated films led to 4.3 billion viewers seeing a depiction of smoking on film, and a previous 2012 Surgeon General's report estimated that giving a R-rating to films that depict smoking would reduce teen smokers by nearly 20 percent and prevent almost one million deaths. Into the 2020s, nearly 90 percent of popular MPAA-rated films that featured smoking failed to include a smoking warning label. Though the prevalence of smoking in films was gradually declining, the percentage of films rated for children that still contained glorified smoking scenes remained higher than advocates had hoped.

The furor of public disapproval that followed actor Sigourney Weaver’s smoking scenes in the PG-13-rated blockbuster film Avatar (2009) was symbolic of the general public sentiment around smoking scenes in non-R-rated films in the twenty-first century. The smoking scenes involving the character Dr. Augustine were lambasted not only as illogical for portraying a smoking doctor but also as gratuitous, inasmuch as the scenes contributed nothing to the storyline. Director James Cameron responded to the criticism by saying that portraying Weaver as a smoking scientist revealed her as a conflicted and flawed character, but many remained unconvinced of the necessity of its inclusion.

Although smoking had always been portrayed by Hollywood on screen to some degree, it was in the early 1940s, during World War II, that smoking in film experienced an explosion in popularity, which accelerated throughout the 1950s. With smoking’s health risks still largely unknown by the public at the time, and with free cigarettes being distributed to US troops by the military, smoking came to be regarded more and more as an affordable luxury, hedonistic and provocative and sensually gratifying.

Women, newly representative of the American workforce, were depicted onscreen as seductive, liberated, sexual, and erotic smokers. Hollywood studios received compensation from tobacco companies for on-screen endorsements. Female stars such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Betty Grable exuded glamour and sex appeal while smoking on screen. Leading men such as Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart, and Spencer Tracy personified masculinity as they smoked their way through scene after scene.

By the 1990s, however, some Hollywood stars, recognizing their responsibility as role models for young people, began to resist. Pierce Brosnan, for instance, who had smoked repeatedly as the character James Bond in previous films, vowed that he would never again smoke on screen playing that role; producers conceded, and Brosnan continued to play the role of James Bond, but newly smoke-free. This is significant because researchers have found a direct correlation between seeing tobacco use depicted in films and trying cigarettes among adolescents. Higher levels of exposure to smoking in films are associated with an increased likelihood of trying cigarettes, even when researchers controlled for age, school performance, gender, and the smoking habits of family members or friends. CDC data has shown that smoking on film has generally trended downward over time, but over 40 percent of PG-13 films in the late 2010s and early 2020s still included depictions of smoking.

Smoking on Television

Before the passage by the US Congress of the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act in 1970, which banned all television and radio advertising of cigarettes, cigarette advertisements were a pervasive feature of American television programming. Winston, Camel, Marlboro, and Tareyton were just a few of the ubiquitous tobacco sponsors of television shows throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

For many years, the longest-running Western on television, Gunsmoke (1955-1975), which was sponsored by Winston cigarettes was introduced with the slogan “Winston tastes good, like a cigarette should.” The Marlboro Man television advertising campaign, in particular, is often cited as the single most successful advertising campaign in history. At a time when Westerns like Gunsmoke, Bonanza (1959–1973), Wagon Train (1957–1962), and The Rifleman (1958–1963) dominated television ratings, the image of the Marlboro Man, a cowboy figure from the Old West, resonated with the American public in a profound sense like no other image. Consequently, Marlboro cigarettes became the best-selling brand, not only in the United States but also in countries with consumers who connected with the cowboy archetype.

The two actors who portrayed the Marlboro Man, Wayne McLaren and David McLean, both developed cancer and died as a result of smoking. After being diagnosed with cancer, both men launched antismoking public-service campaigns, informing the public that their illness was directly attributable to smoking. After his death from lung cancer in 1995, McLean’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Philip Morris, the manufacturer and distributor of Marlboro cigarettes.

Commercials were the primary advertisers of cigarettes and smoking, but television shows did their part, too. Ashtrays and cigarettes were omnipresent props on set, including those of talk shows and game shows. This type of advertising is now called product placement.

In the early 1960s, members of the most popular entertainment group, dubbed the Rat Pack, held a lit cigarette in one hand and a glass of alcohol in the other, while they sang, danced, joked, and acted their way to stardom. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop were emblematic of their time. Almost ten years later, attitudes had changed little, as evidenced by the television show Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (1967–1973). The show’s hosts and characters each week held lit cigarettes and alcoholic beverages throughout the show.

With the advent of the cigarette brand Virginia Slims in 1968, whose slogan announced to women, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” more and more women similarly were depicted on television as smokers. Smoking became a sign of female equality, liberation, and independence. After January 2, 1971, when cigarette advertising was banned on television and radio, Virginia Slims, Marlboro, and other brands were relegated primarily to print media and billboards.

Television, especially in later decades, began to provide a venue for public service and antismoking campaigns. Television and film stars, such as Yul Brynner and many others in the mid-1980s, made powerful and moving antismoking commercials for the American Cancer Society. Brynner, throughout his career, was seen on television either smoking or holding a cigarette. Shortly after his death from lung cancer, a commercial revealing a frail and ravaged Brynner urged American audiences to avoid smoking, attributing his premature death from lung cancer to cigarettes.

The prevalence of smoking on television remained controversial well into the twenty-first century. In 2019, the streaming service Netflix made a major step in reducing the depiction of smoking on screen by promising the removal of all instances of smoking in future projects rated for teenagers and younger. A report from the anti-tobacco group the Truth Initiative that same year argued that Netflix alone was responsible for nearly 28 million instances of exposing minors to tobacco use between 2016 and 2017. The Truth Initiative's 2024 report indicated the prevalence of smoking and vaping depicted in popularly streamed shows increased significantly. The instance of smoking scenes in shows with a target audience between fifteen and twenty-four nearly quadrupled. Despite pledges to decrease such scenes, Netflix alone doubled its tobacco imagery in the early 2020s in works such as Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022), Peaky Blinders (2013-2022), and Cobra Kai (2018- ).

Smoking and the News Media

The news media reports on issues of smoking and tobacco. Sometimes, the news media itself is the source of that news.

In 1995, the CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes became a source of controversy after learning from Jeffrey Wigand, the vice president of research and development at Brown and Williamson tobacco company, that Brown and Williamson had consistently lied about the dangerous threats posed to health by tobacco and had deliberately deceived the public for decades. In April 2005, ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings announced on the air that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. Viewers reacted with shock and disbelief. Jennings, who had smoked for years and then quit, confessed to his viewers that after the enormous stress of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he had been “weak” and had resumed smoking. Less than four months after making this revelation on air, Jennings died of lung cancer.

Jennings’s story marked one of many in a long line of television journalists who succumbed to the effects of smoking. For decades, news anchors read the news with a cigarette in hand, as an ashtray rested conveniently near the microphone. Legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow, who was rarely seen without a cigarette, died in 1965 of lung cancer. NBC national news anchor Chet Huntley, also seen nightly smoking a cigarette while delivering the news, died of lung cancer in 1974. In 2007, television news anchor Tom Snyder, who also had appeared on television holding a cigarette, died of leukemia. TV personalities Jonnie Irwin and Francesca Cappucci also died at young ages of lung cancer. A study in 2022 found that exposure to the news media's anti-tobacco and pro-tobacco content significantly impacted young individual's decision to smoke cigarettes. This finding indicated that efforts in news reports to discourage smoking might warrant increased financial support.

Electronic Cigarettes and Vaping in the Media

In 2007, electronic cigarettes, which heat a solution (usually) containing nicotine to produce an aerosol that can be inhaled to simulate smoking a cigarette, began to be sold and advertised in the United States as smoking cessation aids and a less harmful alternative to traditional cigarettes. Between 2007 and 2016, e-cigarette use had increased steadily. Unlike traditional tobacco products, e-cigarettes can be marketed both through traditional media, such as television and radio, as well as online, through websites and social media.

By 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that e-cigarette use among teens was epidemic, with the CDC reporting that 2.1 million high school students had used e-cigarettes in 2017. According to the Truth Initiative, nearly four out of five middle and high school students had seen at least one e-cigarette advertisement by 2016. E-cigarette manufacturers target the youth market by offering scholarships; creating a buzz on social media outlets such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube; sponsoring cultural events such as music festivals; and introducing flavors and packaging that appeal to young people's palates. As part of its efforts to fight the epidemic, the FDA launched an advertising campaign in September 2018 that uses social media and posters in school bathrooms to let young users know that e-cigarettes contain nicotine and other toxins such as lead and other heavy metals. In 2022, the FDA banned the sale of Juul e-cigarettes (one of the most prominent e-cigarette brands) in the US amid a wider effort to regulate the e-cigarette market. However, the ban was suspended by the US Court of Appeals shortly after, as regulators cited insufficient and conflicting data.

The epidemic continued in the 2020s, with around 10 percent of middle and high school-aged students admitting to using tobacco products. Of those, nearly 8 percent used e-cigarettes, which remained the top tobacco product in the United States for over ten years. Common brands included Elf Bar, Esco Bars, Vuse, JUUL, and Mr. Fog. Each of these brands allocates significant financial resources to advertising their products. Though some rules were implemented through the first decades of the twenty-first century, FDA regulation and federal restrictions on e-cigarettes remained much less stringent than those applied to other tobacco products. The FDA's award-winning digital and social media campaign, The Real Cost, uses data-driven techniques to counter these companies' marketing strategies with anti-tobacco campaigns targeting youth and young adults. For the program's tenth anniversary in 2024, the FDA published a study of its effectiveness, indicating positive outcomes—the program's focus on targeting social media platforms is an important element of success. Several studies have suggested that the medium in which the tobacco advertisement or the program's anti-tobacco message is viewed impacts the effectiveness of its intention in young people's intention to smoke.

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