[icernet] WHO Anti-Smoking Campaign to Target Asian Film

[Arul Selvan]

  In Asia, movies are a major venue for tobacco advertising. The WHO is 
urging filmmakers to stop promoting the use of tobacco products - 
products that the world body says kill half of all regular users. A 
recent WHO study of Indian films, one of the largest motion picture 
producing markets in Asia, says smoking is frequently depicted onscreen. 
And smoking is shown as being glamorous, the report says, which is 
dangerous in a country where almost a quarter of the population uses 
tobacco.

Source:
http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectID=F431DC61-2355-44FA-86EC78F2573AFB6F

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Towards a 'smoke-free' world
http://sify.com/news/scienceandmedicine/fullstory.php?id=13158505

India has the largest film-producing industry in the world with 900 
films per year and 250 million viewers including those watching 
television and cable shows. Filmstars are very popular in India. They 
are involved in a lot of public issues and they get a lot of media 
coverage. Cinema is an extremely useful tool to the tobacco industry. 
Currently 76 percent of all Indian movies portray tobacco unwittingly or 
at the behest of tobacco companies. In movies, tobacco is increasingly 
being exhibited as an activity associated with stress. It has gone up 
from nine percent (of the films) in 1991 to 28.5 percent in 2002. The 
'good guys' or heroes account for 50 percent of the portrayal incidence.