According to a study by Stanton Glantz, smoking was present in 64% of Disney’s youth-rated movies from 1999 to 2006. Today, Disney announced that they will no longer allow depictions of smoking in Disney-branded films and will discourage smoking in Touchstone and Miramax films, which the company also owns.
They also pledged to include anti-smoking public service announcements on any DVDs that do include smoking. Previous research has shown that watching an anti-smoking ad before movies with smoking seemed to "inoculate" viewers and make them less attracted to smoking behavior.
Universal Pictures adopted a similar policy a few months ago. It states: “As a baseline, Universal Pictures presumes that no smoking incidents should appear in any youth-rated film produced by Universal or any wholly owned Universal Studios film label and released in the U.S.”
Leave a Reply