COMMENTARY

Smoking depicted in movies is a major and growing public-health problem. Despite a falling prevalence of smoking in the real world, the frequency of smoking in top-grossing movies in the USA has about doubled since 1990, when the US tobacco industry first promised Congress that it would stop paid product-placement in movies.1 Indeed the frequency of smoking in movies has returned to levels not seen since 1950, well before popular understanding that smoking was a major cause of disease and death.2 Concern over smoking in movies led WHO to make “Smoke Free Film ” a theme of 2003 World No Tobacco Day. There is already a strong case, from cross-sectional3,4 and experimental studies,5 that smoking in movies increases adolescent smoking. Such studies, whils