On The Media

Mr. Glantz hides behind "scientific evidence" quite masterfully in this piece. He does not say that other destructive behaviors should be banned from movies, simply because there is no evidence that they encourage emulation. It seems to me a question of art, not science, that should govern discussion of this issue. It is the place of movies to tell stories based on human experience, real or imagined. Human nature is such that we are bound to take risks and make bad decisions. Smoking, drinking, loveless sex, and all the other behaviors which seem to need disclaimers to make movies "safe" for kids are part of life. Editing smoking out of movies simply makes them unrealistic portrayals of our shared experience, and limits the artistic expression of filmmakers.

When is NPR going to look beyond the numbers in this "scientific evidence"? UCLA has studies showing how bad these numbers are. This is bad data t best. What is more important is that the Legacy Foundation does not force state to spend MSA monies on tobacco education. In every state where the monies are spent according to CDC guidelines, youth smoking rates are low. THEY WATCH THE SAME MOVIES....

Hmmmmmm.

I enjoyed this segment on NPR. Dr. Glantz is right to advocate to get Hollywood to treat tobacco with the same sensitivity they do foul language and sex. People die when they get addicted to Marlboros. The old saying "sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt you" should pay heed to the cancer sticks that big tobacco and Hollywood have pushed over the years. Parents should rightfully be concerned when they find out that Disney has been doing busiess with Philip Morris. I think there is little doubt that smoking and brand placements in the movies and likely other forms of enterainment media have contributed to shaping attitudes toward smoking over the years. The proposals to make Hollywood come clean and make transparent their addiction to tobacco is long over due. Those who wish to challenge Dr. Glantz on the evidence that smoking in movies has no impact are either naive, foolish, or more likely on the take from big tobacco. The validity of any tobacco studies out of places like UCLA should be questioned given the fact that Philip Morris happily provides grants to keep the so-called controversy alive. Sound familiar????

Some attack the studies that show that movies and TV have an influence on smoking rates. But from Olivia Newton Johns perspective, she wishes she never had smoked in GREASE (I think) because she now feels guilty that some may have started smoking because of her.

Also, there are actors who started smoking for a part and then it took them years to get off tobacco. So smoking in movies is dangerous for the viewers and the actors.

The tobacco companies have used media events for promoting smoking, such as the parade of debutants back in the 1920's. They armed the women with cigarets to get more women to smoke and more women did.

Does it make sense that using the "F-word" more than once in a film automatically gives it an R rating while film makers can show as many tobacco impressions as they want with absolutely no effect on the rating whatsoever?

This isn't about censorship, it is simplying about modifying the rating system. Films can still be made with smoking, they can still "tell stories based on human experience, real or imagined." These stories would just be identified in the rating system so parents know what's in the films their children watch.

The added benefit is that it will also help stop the tobacco industry from targeting our youth.

That was a good, measured comment, Dr. Glantz. The comment that PSAs by Phillip Morris was needed. It reminded me of the push to get the FDA to control tobacco. Phillip Morris has that so watered down it is counterproductive.

I could not help but perform the auditory equivalent of a double-take upon hearing Dr Glantz' suggestion that movie studios should put PSA's ahead of films that contained smoking.

It immediately made me remember seeing the anti-piracy PSA in the beginning of many DVDs and how absolutely ineffectual those were. While the anti-smoking PSA would hopefully not be as hokey and misdirected, its usefulness would no doubt be the same: another reason for a fast-forward button.

I am not, nor have I ever been, a smoker myself, but it would seem that the fight in a movie theater should be to get parents to put smoking in context and look after their children. Such organization-imposed nannying rarely achieves an adequate result.

Given his repeated appeals to the "overwhelming scientific evidence," I sought to learn more about Stanton Glanz' credentials. Amazingly, there isn't much information available online about this very visible and outspoken man... What I did find indicates that his earned doctorate is in mechanical engineering, and that his "doctorate in medicine" is merely honorary, presumably as reward for the massive funding and attention he has brought to Stanford, the University of California, etc.

Perhaps I was misinformed here.

Would you please serve your listeners by clarifying Stanton Glanz' real credentials. Has he ever studied medicine? Has he ever EARNED a degree in medicine? The credentials you list in your show ("professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco") sound dubious, at best, especially when the host lovingly calls him "Stan".

Drinking alcoholic beverages

Eating 'fast' foods

smoking

Let's make a 'clean' sweep of every thing that isn't good for you.

Go for broke!!

'Life should be like the movies or movies should potray life

Glanz is a fool and so are the numbskulls who accept the junk science he uses to promote himself and his money making, power grabbing schemes. Ad generating and media reporting do not justify the attention this freak receives.

I wonder if these idiots are going to erase the 'pipe' from all 'Popeye Cartons'??

Mr. Glanz's Revisionism seems a lot like China's 1960s Cultural Revisionism to me.

America does not like it when other countries "revisionize" their past history to remove things they now find embarrassing. So, why is it ok for America to do the same thing.

Mr. Glanz is very good at revisionizing himself too for the public eye.

Does it seem proper that a person with a gambling addiction who is grossly overweight and paid a LOT of money by the companies that make quit-smoking products for what he says and does should be telling the rest of us what we can and cannot watch in the movies ?

And what about Mr. Glanz's love of big cars.

Each and every car spews out 1800 TIMES more chemicals Per Day than does the average smoker.

That makes Mr. Glanz an 1800 TIMES more Second Hand Smoke exhaler with each of his cars than I am with my cigarettes.

Plus, cars are 2900 TIMES worse than Reduced Risk Cigarettes http://www.reducedriskcigarettes.ca

Yet cars are an accepted addiction, despite being the single biggest polluters on the planet.

By all accounts we should either also Ban Cars from the roads, and removed from all movies future, present, and past,

or else also accept Reduced Risk Cigarettes http://www.reducedriskcigarettes.ca

Steve Hartwell

Toronto, Canada

As an aspiring filmmaker (and a lifelong non-smoker, I might add - I can count the number of times I've tried to smoke a cigarette on one hand), this sort of lobbying effort really, really bothers me. While I have much disdain for the MPAA, I am glad that they haven't completely keeled over to these whackos, like Mr. Glantz.

Look, I have no doubt that exposure to smoking in film and television can influence some kids to take up the habit, however, I also have no doubt that there are variables in that data that change the context of the argument. For instance, I would LOVE to see how many of these individuals who allegedly take up smoking each year because of exposure in film and television also come from households with one or more smokers. Every study that I have read seems to indicate that growing up in a home where either a parents smokes or smoking is not discouraged has the greatest effect on future behaviors. The fact that I grew up with two non-smoking parents who advocated against smoking as part of my ideological upbringing is the reason I'm a non-smoker - and trust me, I watched more movies as a child than the vast majority of my peers.

Do our politicians bullied by the industry financed lobbies and an entirely cooperative media circus have the right to treat us as livestock? Herded by political correctness and the popular lobby tactic sold in “protection of the children” to the point they loose all the joys of childhood to the politics of the day. I am getting pretty sick of it myself. A point most don't even realize which is giving this fear fad it's strength is the opinion we should be micro managed and be used as a profit center based on our imperfections.

There is no redeeming quality in profiting from addiction. Those who sell Tobacco are no more responsible for indecent acts than many charities and pharma industries promoting the divisions of communities and granting lease to the hatred they defined. All to collect their ill gotten gains, with little true credibility in their claims of compassionate motivations.

A point I would add which should be raised more often in embarrassing the ideology of fear.

Ask the politicians and lobby experts what gives them the right to treat us like Livestock in administering their " protections" or "Help" lets see if we can provoke a single intelligent response which is not a personal attack, a simple questioning of motivations.

The application of the question and the predictable look of fear should be amusing in itself.

Can anyone possibly see a more appropriate description of epidemiology studies than efficiency reports in tending the sheep?

They even refer to themselves as shepards and we as the flock. What is lost is our individuality, creativity and ingenuity as we are forced to focus on survival as opposed to an enriched lifestyle which could take our focus to more creativity.

Are we content to live as sheep analyzed by SAMMEC reports of cost assessments, and theoretic risk assessments of personal behaviours [which in no way represent natural science] to ensure we as the "Human Capitol" produce the highest possible financial yield?

Population views in lobby assessments are entirely convenient in avoiding what separates us from the sheep. The emotional barriers of conscience, gives us a leg up on the dinosaurs in political medicine, who live according to grown ideologies of fear, not one of them can question, without consequences administered from within their collective.

They don't have nearly the maturity or integrity essential to manage themselves, yet they have the arrogance to think they can manage the rest of us through health scare and tremendous exaggerations in defining what constitutes “acceptable” risk.

Maybe we should go at this from another angle: Let's watch the smoking. We shouldn't be sanitizing life.

Let's see it in all its phlegmatic, cancerous, hacking, wheezing, arteriosclerotic glory.

I am doing some research for school to find out if Media says "Smoking looks good". I know it doesnt actually say that, but with all the smoking and sex in movies, it basically says its ok to do it too. I think media is a bad influenance. Do you agree with me? If u are a parent u should watch what ur kids watch.