THE ECONOMIST: Can a film of a smoker trigger the act?FOR beleaguered smokers, the world is an increasingly hostile place. Hounded out of bars and other public spaces, tutted at in doorways and shelters, smokers are now to be found cowering down cold and smelly alleyways. To add to their misery, each day seems to bring a new study showing how vile and dangerous even a whiff of cigarette smoke can be. Could things get any worse?
Possibly, if smokers were also knocked off their comfortable perch within popular culture. For smokers in rich countries have at least been able to rely on films (especially, but not only, classic ones) to portray their habit as somewhat more normal and prevalent than it actually is in the real world. Indeed, Hollywood has long been accused of glamorising smoking, and thereby encouraging people to emulate their on-screen idols.
Research has identified links between smoking in films and the consumption of cigarettes by those leaving a cinema. What prompts such a response is unclear. But it is clearly relevant to those involved in public-health policy. Dylan Wagner and his colleagues at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, therefore decided to investigate the question. Read on and comment >>> | Thursday, January 20, 2011
When is this crusade against poor smokers going to stop? Incidentally, I write as a non-smoker. In fact, I am an ex-smoker. Further, I don’t consider myself to be biassed in favour of smoking in any way. But I must say that I find this hounding of smokers very tedious. The record, as they used to say in a less hi-tech age, is sticking!
We all know the disadvantages and health risks attached to smoking. They have been thrown at us for years now. In fact, scarcely a week goes by without another ‘scientific university study’ finding yet another evil attached to the smoking of tobacco. What is never written is that there actually are some benefits to moderate smoking. One of them being that smoking helps keep people slim, by increasing one’s metabolism. And what doctors don’t tell you when they are twisting your arm to quit is that you should expect to gain considerable weight! Orthodox thinking states that one gains weight because one nibbles instead of smoking. Not so! In most cases it is because by giving up smoking one is also starting a slow-down in one’s metabolism. When our metabolism slows down, we gain weight. Now we all know the dangers of weight gain. Society is full of fatties, and nobody knows what to do about the epidemic.
Despite what the nannies say, smoking appears in films because it happens to be a sexy, provocative act. And that is a fact, however unhealthy the habit may be.
As an ex-smoker – a successful ex-smoker, I might add – I really do hope that the powers that be do not take it into their heads to ban smoking in films. I like my films to be realistic. It also gives people who used to smoke vicarious pleasure to see an actor on the big screen smoking the odd fag. Besides, I am a grown man, and I don’t take too kindly to censorship in any of its forms. There are many habits far, far worse than smoking in this evil world. If the worst that a person does twixt the womb and the grave is enjoy the odd drink and or smoke, then he hasn’t done too badly! I think a modicum of tolerance is called for. – © Mark
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THE ECONOMIST: Smoking out the truth: Why some people smoke more than others do >>> | Thursday, January 26, 2006
