Students Hear Anti-Smoking Talks

To mark the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout, students from four of the city’s high schools gathered Wednesday to listen to speakers discuss the portrayal of smoking in movies.

A handful of students from each of the schools met at Santa Susana High School to listen to the discussion conducted by a nurse, researcher and entertainment industry representative.

Allison Barton, a nurse for the Simi Valley Unified School District who helped coordinate the program, said she wanted students “to understand that there are forces outside themselves that help them make decisions sometimes.”

Cornelia Pechmann, an associate professor of marketing at UC Irvine, shared the results of a study she conducted that she believes demonstrates how movies influence the desire among young people to smoke.

Larry Deutchman, senior vice president of production and marketing for the Entertainment Industries Council, said cigarettes have become a simple way of telling an audience something about a character’s personality.

But Deutchman doesn’t condone the widespread use of smoking in film. He said the entertainment council is fostering a contest for young filmmakers that encourages them to come up with new solutions to the movie-making models described above.