Tobacco promotions and depictions of smoke in movies cause teenagers to take up smoking, according to a sweeping report on tobacco in the media.
The report card by the National Cancer Institute launch the tobacco industry spent more than $US13 ($NZ18.46) billion on smoking-related advertising and packaging in 2005.
These efforts boosted overall tobacco use, contradicting industry claims that they are intended to build brand loyalty.
"This is the first government report to present classical conclusions that, number unitary, tobacco publicizing and promotion are causally related to increased tobacco use in the population," said Dr Ronald Davis, senior scientific editor of the news report and yesteryear president of the American Medical Association.
"And, No. 2, (it shows) that depictions of smoke in movies is causally related to youth smoking initiation," Davis told a news conference.
The report, which examined more than thou scientific studies on how the media influences tobacco use, comes at a time when efforts to keep brigham Young Americans from picking up cigarettes ingest stalled.
Tobacco manipulation remains the single-largest lawsuit of preventable death in the United States, accounting for more than four hundred,000 previous deaths each year.
Smoking is down from 42 percent of US adults in 1965 to 21 percent in 2006. Still, more than 4000 young citizenry smoke their first cigarette each day, and another 1000 get regular smokers. Nearly 90 percent of adult smokers began smoke while in their teens.
The report constitute that even brief exposure to advertising influences teen attitudes. Three-quarters or more of dispatch movies picture cigarette smoking, and specific brands canful be identified in about one third.
Last month, half a dozen major motion-picture show studios - Viacom Inc'sParamount Pictures, Sony Pictures, News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox, General Electric Co's Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Co and Time Warner Inc's Warner Bros - aforesaid they would place anti-smoking public service announcements on DVDs of all movies with youth ratings that depict smoking.
The campaign, brokered by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a non-profit industriousness group, does not include youth-rated movies (PG-13 or below) in theatres.
But the report ground mass media campaigns aimed at reduction smoking do work, particularly when combined with other tobacco-control strategies.
Health experts at the word conference called for much more money for such media efforts.
They said 1969 legislation forbidding smoking advertising in broadcast media and other curbs have lED tobacco companies to shift marketing maneuver. Price discount promotions, which accounted for 75 percent
of total tobacco plant marketing expenditures in 2005, have proved to be highly effective.
"Any promotional technique that lowers the terms the kids see when they go to buy a pack of cigarettes is extremely important," Davis said. "Partial advertising bans don't work."
Dr Janet Collins, who directs chronic disease prevention and health furtherance at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, endorsed the report's findings.
"The reputation speaks clearly to what amounts to an assault on the nation's health," Collins said.
The report comes just forward of a Senate suffrage to yield the US Food and Drug Administration oversight of tobacco regulation.
The measure passed the US House of Representatives last month by a wide-cut margin.
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