Hollywood Is Urged to Act on Smoking

WASHINGTON — Blaming Hollywood for contributing to the “pediatric epidemic” of smoking among children, Vice President Al Gore pressed the entertainment industry on Wednesday to commit to concrete steps to prevent glamorous portrayals of tobacco use on television and in movies.

“We know that popular culture has an enormous impact on our children’s habits and on America’s values,” Gore told reporters after a White House meeting with Hollywood leaders. “Today, as more and more children start smoking, the fact is that smoking in the movies is way up as well.”

Gore cited a study of 1996 movies by the American Lung Assn., which found that characters were shown smoking in 77% of the 133 movies surveyed. That represents a dramatic increase from the 1970s, when only 29% of the characters in films were smokers, according to research by Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco.

These statistics are particularly alarming to the Clinton administration as it tries to find ways to stem the increase in smoking among children. Between 1991 and 1995, the percentage of American teens who smoke increased from slightly more than one-quarter to nearly one-third, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vice president, whose sister died of lung cancer, was critical of the entertainment industry for making smoking seem desirable rather than showing horrific images of the consequences of tobacco use, such as people “drowning in the fluids that build up in their lungs.”

Appearing before reporters with Gore, Richard Masur, president of the Screen Actors Guild, said he thinks that the increased depiction of smoking in films and television stems from a new generation of creative people who do not have the same sensitivity about the danger of tobacco as older generations.

Also at the meeting with Gore were Jack Shea, president of the Directors Guild; John Romano, a member of the Writers Guild; Chris Keyser, executive producer and co-creator of the Fox sitcom “Party of Five”; Paula Hart, executive producer of the sitcom “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”; model Christy Turlington; and Jennifer Perry of Children’s Action Network, a nonprofit consortium of entertainment industry leaders.