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SMOKING: Karan Omidvari, Klaus Lessnau, Jeannie Kim, Donald Mercante, Ann Weinacker, and Carol Mason Smoking in Contemporary American Cinema Chest 2005; 128: 746-754 [Abstract] [Full text] [PDF]

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Response to: Smoking in Contemporary American Cinema

Madeline A. Dalton, Ph.D., Jennifer J. Tickle, Ph.D., Anna M. Adachi-Mejia, Ph.D., Todd F. Heatherton, Ph.D., Michael L. Beach, M.D., Ph.D., Linda Titus-Ernstoff, Ph.D., James D. Sargent, M.D.   (1 September 2005)

Response to: Smoking in Contemporary American Cinema 1 September 2005
Madeline A. Dalton, Ph.D., Research Associate Professor Dartmouth Medical School, Jennifer J. Tickle, Ph.D., Anna M. Adachi-Mejia, Ph.D., Todd F. Heatherton, Ph.D., Michael L. Beach, M.D., Ph.D., Linda Titus-Ernstoff, Ph.D., James D. Sargent, M.D. Send letter to journal: Re: Response to: Smoking in Contemporary American Cinema Madeline.A.Dalton{at}Dartmouth.edu Madeline A. Dalton, Ph.D., et al.	We are writing to address some inaccuracies in your recent publication on smoking in movies1 including the authors’ assertion that theirs was the “first study to objectively quantify the prevalence of smoking in contemporary movies.” In 2002, we published an extensive content analysis of the top 250 contemporary movies released over a ten- year period using a validated and objective methodology.2 Similar to Omidvari et. al, we found the prevalence of major character smoking was 24.9%. We also found that 87% of movies portray tobacco use and 81% of R- rated movies featured as least one major character using tobacco. These numbers are not inconsistent or “arbitrary,” as suggested by Omidvari, they simply reflect different ways to summarize movie smoking. The authors failed to acknowledge that we and others had previously published similar rates for character smoking2, 3 and they incorrectly cited our content analysis as reporting an increase in movie smoking since 1990, despite our clear documentation that we found no trend in movie tobacco use over time.2 Citing another one of our publications, Omidvari and colleagues falsely claim that we reported that “Hollywood is attempting to get minorities, and specifically black women, to smoke,” even though we specifically stated in our paper that we did not examine race or ethnicity in our analysis.4 Although the authors accused other investigators of using “arbitrary criteria” for documenting movie smoking, they failed to describe even the most basic aspects of their own methodology, including how they defined smoking, how they chose 5 major characters for each movie, where they obtained their weekly box-office ranking, and how they determined the “annual incomes” and U.S. citizenship for movie characters. They failed to provide any theoretical justification for excluding whole groups of movies (e.g. science fiction movies; movies set before 1990) and characters (e.g. Americans in foreign countries). In addition, they used an inconsistent sampling method that confounds movie rating with year of release by including PG, PG-13 and R-rated movies released between 1996 and 1998 but only PG and PG-13 movies released between 1990 and 1996. We agree with the authors that movie smoking should be examined with an objective and methodologically sound approach and that the results should be presented in an unbiased manner. Unfortunately, by failing to acknowledge previously published findings, incorrectly citing published reports, and using flawed and inadequately described methodology, Omidvari’s paper does not accomplish either of these objectives. References 1. Omidvari K, Lessnau K, Kim J, Mercante D, Weinacker A, Mason C. Smoking in contemporary American cinema. Chest. August 2005 2005;128(2):746-754. 2. Dalton MA, Tickle JJ, Sargent JD, Beach ML, Ahrens MB, Heatherton TF. The incidence and context of tobacco use in popular movies from 1988 to 1997. Prev Med. May 2002;34(5):516-523. 3. McIntosh WD, Bazzini DG, Smith SM, Wayne SM. Who smokes in Hollywood? Characteristics of smokers in popular films from 1940 to 1989. Addict Behav. May-Jun 1998;23(3):395-398. 4. Tickle JJ, Sargent JD, Dalton MA, Beach ML, Heatherton TF. Favourite movie stars, their tobacco use in contemporary movies, and its association with adolescent smoking. Tob Control. Mar 2001;10(1):16-22.