This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Greendale Teens Concerned About Hollywood Portrayal of Tobacco Use

Take Tobacco out of our Movies

This Sunday, the greatest movies of 2013 will be celebrated at the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, one thing teens like me see way too often in the movies is tobacco use.

Showing tobacco use in movies that are rated PG or PG-13 sends the wrong message that it’s cool to smoke. As a part of FACT, Wisconsin’s youth tobacco prevention program, I’ve learned that the 2012 Surgeon General’s report showed teens like me are more likely to start using tobacco because of seeing it in movies. Tobacco use was seen 14.9 billion times in 2012’s G, PG and PG-13 movies. 99% of those were in PG-13 movies, which are the ones teens go to the most!

As a young child, I loved watching the movie Grease. I haven’t seen the movie in 8 years, yet there is no scene more prominent in my head than the one at the very end. In the final scene, the main character Sandy goes from a good girl to a girl dressed all in black, with a cigarette in hand. This shows that Sandy had to change herself to be accepted. As a young and reckless child, my first thoughts were that smoking was cool. The consequences were never shown and people don’t always realize that the I’ve sometimes seen my younger siblings imitate characters smoking. They pretend to be smoking with certain snack items like pretzel sticks because that’s what they think is “cool”. They see adults and teenagers doing it in the community.

A single cigarette contains around 600 chemicals, over 4,000 when lit, and over 50 that are known carcinogens. Some of these chemicals include ammonia, which is a chemical used to clean toilets and arsenic, which is a poison. Directly
inhaling the smoke can not only do damage to the smoker but also people.

Even though some movies continue to promote tobacco to teens, I’m doing my part to help other teens be tobacco-free. As a member of FACT we are spreading the truth about tobacco.

For more information on FACT, visit fightwithFACT.com.

Caroline Hawley and Alexis Mitchell
Greendale High School FACT

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?