your no fan of cencorship but its ok to censor smoking.= bullshit. take a stand. either its ok to censor everything or nothign at all. make a choice stick with it.

second. i dont smoke. not cigarettes anyway. but c'mon this is crazy talk. maybe 50 sixty years ago when tobaco companies portraid there product as not damaging to your health, hell some went out and said smoking was good for you. but everyones knows the affects of smoking and what it can lead to. if you decide to smoke you deserve what you get. whats the world coming to. next you wont be able to smoke in your own home. oh wait depending on where you live thats already inforced if you live in apartments.

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No one has died from hearing the f-word. Similarly, no one has died from watching someone smoke a cigarette in a movie.

This guy’s analogy is totally f-worded.

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The ratings system isn't censorship, pete. There's nobody who is saying people can't smoke in movies nor are they saying that you can't watch movies with people smoking. The ratings are simply a parental guide. I'm not a fan of the MPAA, but things could definitely be a lot worse.

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things could be a lot worse, maybe. but why thrown in the " I'm no fan of censorship" if censorship is a non-issue. i dont know... sounds fishy.

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Newsflash, pete: Stamping a rating on a film isn't censorship.

The rating itself does not prohibit any portion of a film's content from being exhibited, privately or publicly. The MPAA's rating system was developed specifically to avoid censorship (both mandated by the government and self-imposed by the Hays code) by providing a minimum of information about the general content of the film for the public's benefit. That's providing information, not stifling it.

Including smoking in the criteria considered when rating a film does not in any way prohibit smoking from being depicted in a film. If a studio or distributor chooses not to finance or exhibit a film, the studio is perpetrating censorship, not the rating.

Taking exception to the criteria considered by the ratings board and its transparency is one thing, but censorship is something entirely different.

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Showed up late to the party on that one...

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I’m not going to pretend to even know what the hell the hays code is. Maybe I should Google it, come back when I am a bit more informed...no.

Look, opinion ahead, the HSPH is trying to censor smoking on the big screen, not the mpaa. if they had it there way, they will soon enough the way things are going, you wont be able to light up on a public street outdoors. They pressured the mpaa to cave on the issue. Like Nathan said. No one has died from seeing some one light up on screen.

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Than shouldn't saying the 'f-word' be less severe now? Screwed up mpaa, Im so happy valenti finally died (not to sound evil or anything...)

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Actually, people have died and will die because of the smoking they have seen on screen.

One of the reasons that lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer is that the movie stars early on were paid to smoke by PR agents for the tobacco industry, to make cigarettes socially acceptable for women. If the tobacco industry didn't think product placement worked, they wouldn't have invested millions to put smoking back on movie screens after TV ads were banned in 1970.

The peer-reviewed research shows that, today, movie smoking recruits some 390,000 U.S. kids to smoke (about half of all new recruits), handing the tobacco companies $4.1 billion in lifetime sales revenue from each year's cohort (npv).

The MPAA's loophole-ridden placebo policy is a futile response to a May 1 letter from thirty Attorneys General asking the industry to keep smoking out of future movies "accessible to children and youth." Too drastic, with 120,000 deaths in the balance? Did you ever leave a movie thinking there should have been more smoking in it?

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Actually, yes, I have left a movie thinking there should have been more smoking in it. I never thought I'd reference it for any reason, but Constantine definitely should have lit up at the end. It was perfectly in character for him to do so and, seeing as it was the final shot of the flick, I literally left the movie thinking there should have been more smoking in it. That is inconsequential, however, because the movie is weightless to begin with.

Have you honestly ever left a movie thinking there should have been less smoking in it? As soon as those credits rolled, the temperature in your blood soared because there was, at some point, 'too much smoking'?

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Tobacco is a drug that leads to addiction and illness. The latter not only for the smokers but for second hand smokers as well. I as a German applaud the U.S. for being always the first to take actions to protect people from getting addicted to tobacco and protecting non-smokers from second hand smoke. And I do believe it makes a difference if the protagonists of a film light up or not because it will have an impact on the audience by way of identification and naturally especially on teens.

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Any person making apologies on smoking (or by idleness absent from discussions) probably is motivated by egotism and self-interest. The care for your pals, dudes, relatives, kids, friends and fellow makes impossible to ignore or praise the ill effects of depicting smoking as something glourious on a movie. Where's the glory in that?

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When can we expect harsher rating for movies where people eat burger and fries? And amovie wehre people eat burger and fries, and smokes? Man, that's a NC 17 guaranteed...

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1) My problem with the MPAA code is the ratings board's obliviousness to context. Contrary to the MPAA's statement, I do not expect this to change once they take smoking into account.

2) Bloom's statement caling smoking in cinema "cliched" is his opinion, plain and simple. I don't agree with him on that either.

3) Should we begin to take into account how many people die from obesity? Car accidents? Maybe any movie that features someone eating cheesecake should get an R.

I am not a smoker. But I don't agree with the censorship of art because parents are unable to teach their kids the difference between real and fake, or the difference between right and wrong. If the MPAA would show the ability to evaluate each movie on a contextual basis and penalize those films that really do glamorize smoking, I would grudgingly accept this policy. They have not. So I am against it.

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Its been said many times already, but people don't seem to get the point...THIS IS NOT CENSORSHIP!! The movies will still be released, still have the option of being viewed by the general public, etc., which means they are not being censored. This is merely providing another tool for parents and the public to use when deciding to see a movie. If the parent doesn't have a problem with smoking then they'll still take their kids to see it. Seems to me this argument is about 20 years to late, given that drug use/abuse has long been used by the MPAA to decide a films rating. Considering that cigarettes ARE a drug (one that kills more people than any other, as well as more people than cancer, heart disease, and car accidents COMBINED) I see no reason why it shouldn't be considered in the rating of a film.

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It might not be censorship officially, but if you think that the ratings doen't influence what kind of movies are made you leave on the moon.
Poor Bogie. Poor Lauren Bacall. Poor Barbara Stanwyck. All the movies they were in would now be rated R or more. And poor movie characters, with this rampant nowadays culture that doesn't want them human, with their flaws, but simply, and only, role models.
The good thing is that now Die Hard 4 will really be rated R. Unless they decided to digitally remove McClane's cigarettes, and add a CGI patch...

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If the Harvard School for Public Health put all their brains, energy, and enthusiasm into something a bit more helpful for the *public,* like, say, worked to eliminate the suffering of the nasty realm of meth, heroin, or even (oh do they care about poor people?) crack use, maybe the American public would really served. All this does is serve the school. They all got to go home and tell their pals they went to Hollywood and made somebody change!
If you ask me, most Americans, smokers and non-smokers both, are sick of the antismoking bandwagon and its righteous, holy health mongers. It's time to pull it over and park it, dudes. That is, unless you've invented a nice, painless way for me to quit. Then I'm all ears.

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And to Sam G. we should have more people who are bigger in films because the stick thin look is way way too old. Bigger is better. If you see Hairspray then you can't tell me you don't like Nikki Blonsky. She's fantastic and now they're all being turned away because of their size. Also, now they want to put in the larger clothes that obesity is bad for your health..well they should put everywhere that bulemia and anorexia is bad for your health. Not everyone who wears bigger clothes are fat, just like not everyone who wears a size 2 is anorexic or bulemic.

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This is ridiculous. I'm under sixteen, and have already missed out on amazing movies in theaters due to the stupid rating system. I do understand that there must be rating system in place so that kids more susceptible to violence and sex can't be influenced at vulnerable age, and to give higher ratings to movies that aim so-called "offensive material" to children.

Still, the rating system is missused. Two f words, and it get's an R rating? But movies full of sex that are geered towards kids and teens gets a PG-13.
And now this? Smoking has to be used sometimes in movies because people smoke sometimes in real life, and this smoking shouldn't be judged as "aimed at youth".

This is also just adding to the stigma against smokers, telling them what they do is wrong, and that they should be ashamed for smoking "cancer sticks". Its okay to believe its wrong, but constantly attack their beliefs is also wrong. DARE and other programs about smoking should not be aimed at telling kids not to smoke, but informing them on the dangers. If a person smokes at a reasonable age, its is due to their decision, and we as a society should not target them, and if a child is that influenced by movies, maybe they shouldn't watch them, and maybe their parent should be parents, not hte rating system.

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I'm sorry, I went to sleep and somehow woke up in Nazi Germany. This is absolute bullshit.
Yeah it's unhealthy, yeah it kills people. So does drinking. So that should go, too. How about hot-dogging it in a car? Plenty of people die in automobile accidents. Heart disease... let's ban movies where people are eating fatty, unhealthy foods like french fries and ice cream... or any movie depicting fast food. Or let's give the nightly news an X rating. God knows that shit is disturbing enough. Once you start down that road, where does it end?
Honestly, what douchebag studio would allow cigarette smoking in a movie that's marketed toward children anyway? It's a non-issue and if you teach your kids right and actually participate in being a parent, then you can do your best to keep them from smoking. When they're an adult, they will do what they want.
This country, under the influence of conservative movements is becoming a nation of wrong-headed wusses. You can't legislate morality or common sense. Everyone is looking to blame someone else their problems instead of dealing with REALITY. People smoke. Don't want your kids to smoke? Be a parent, jackass and don't let them.
Let's all give a big "sig heil" to the MPAA, the bunch of candy asses that they are. Now be good Nazi and go back to what you were doing, everything is going to be just fine and the world is a safe place. Your government and the MPAA says so.

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