Cigarettes and Tobacco News

Nov 28, 2005, HAMPTON -- The student smoking corner just out of sight of Winnacunnet High School is busy at 7 a.m.

Students sit around a picnic table next to Eaton Park to have a smoke before the first bell. The area is next to the new student parking lot and fits the criterion of being 100 feet away from school grounds, said Steve, 16, of Hampton, who was inhaling the last bit of a cigarette.

He really wants to give it up. He’s been smoking since he was 7.

"I tried to quit," he said. It’s hell, very hard. Everyone tells me it’s mental."

Asked how he got started, Steve shrugs his shoulders. Both of his parents smoked.

His friend, Christina, 17, of Seabrook started smoking when she was 10, she said.

She’s tried the nicotine patch.

"It’s very hard," she said.

Both said they don’t want to smoke for the rest of their lives. They know the risks.

James, 15, started smoking when he was 8. He quit at 12 and then went back.

Why?

"I couldn’t help it," he said. "My stepmom smokes. My friends smoke. I was sick and tired of wanting one."

Another student, age 15, who didn’t give a name, said she started smoking at age 10, quit at 12 or 13, and then went back. It helps reduce stress, she said.

An average of one in four teenagers smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control, a figure that has dropped from 36 percent in 1997.

The CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey report attributed the drop to an increase in the price of cigarettes, school efforts to prevent tobacco use and increases in mass-media campaigns.

Studies show most smokers get hooked before they graduate from high school, according to the CDC. If someone hasn’t begun the habit before the age of 18, he or she is likely not to start.

With all of the anti-smoking education, why do teens, and children even younger, begin?

According to a new study published by Dartmouth Medical School this month in "Pediatrics," the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, movies are an influential factor.

Children who see the highest amount of smoking portrayed in the movies are almost three times as likely to smoke, according to Dr. Linda Titus-Ernstoff, a professor at Dartmouth Medical School who worked on the study.

Researchers looked at other factors, such as peers, parents, or siblings smoking.

"Even when (other factors) were controlled, movies mattered," Titus-Ernstoff said. "Seeing smoking still mattered."

Adolescents with the highest exposure to movies showing actors smoking were 2.6 times more likely to try it, compared to those with the lowest exposure to smoking, she said.

The study, published by Dr. James D. Sargent, a professor of Pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School, was paid for by the National Cancer Institute.

Of every 100 adolescents who tried smoking, 38 did so because they saw smoking portrayed in movies, according to the study.

Researchers asked 6,522 children ages 10 to 14 to identify films they had seen from a list of 50 randomly selected box-office hits released in the United States from 1998 to 2000.

"Basically, what they did was code over 500 movies for smoking content," Titus-Ernstoff said. "The movies they selected for coding were box-office hits for the previous five years. They asked children whether they had seen the movies, from a list of 50, because we couldn’t ask children about all 500.

"We went back and looked at the movies the child said she or he had seen, listed the smoking occurrences, and whether they had tried smoking. We didn’t just count the number of movies."

Researchers then interviewed the children about family influences and school behaviors.

"Ten percent of children (ages 10-14) had tried smoking," she said. "We want to find out what is going on in this young age group to encourage smoking."

The type of movie and smoking also matters, Titus-Ernstoff said.

Cruella DeVille smoking from a vintage cigarette holder in "101 Dalmatians" has less influence than a favorite older male or female star in a R-rated movie, according to Titus-Ernstoff.

"The problem is what influences adolescents is seeing their favorite actors smoke," she said. "The R-rated movies are more influential. It turns out most of the smoking is in the R-rated movies. There isn’t that much smoking in movies directly intended for children."

In 1998, the states’ attorneys general and the major tobacco companies came to an agreement that prohibited placement of tobacco brands in movies.

"What we found, even though they’re not accepting money for tobacco placement anymore, R-rated movie smoking has decreased, but the amount of smoking in others has not. The movies intended for children, PG rated, don’t have a big difference."

Just recently in The New York Times, pediatricians took out a full-page ad urging movie producers to place smoking warnings on films and DVDs, Titus-Ernstoff said.

"If you reduce the movies the child will see, you will have an impact as a parent."