WHO calls on film and fashion industries to stop glamourizing tobacco

Gearing up for World No Tobacco Day, the United Nations health agency today called on the film and fashion industries to stop glamourizing tobacco and urged them not to be used as vehicles of death and disease.

“We know that young people who see more tobacco use on the screen are much more likely to try smoking. Hollywood knows it and the tobacco companies know it. The time has come to put an end to it,” said Derek Yach, Executive Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health section.

The call comes a week after the WHO’s 192 Member States adopted the first global treaty encouraging measures to reduce tobacco use.

WHO said the “No Tobacco Day” celebrations, to be held on 31 May, will focus on the role of the fashion and film industries in fostering a worldwide epidemic. “The worlds of film and fashion cannot be accused of causing cancer. But they should not promote a product that does,” the agency said in a statement.

Film and fashion are critical in shaping and reinforcing popular norms of beauty, success and fun, WHO said. Given their huge potential for influencing the public, especially young people, both industries are fertile ground for tobacco industry marketing tactics.

Between 1988 and 1997, 85 per cent of the top 25 Hollywood films dramatized tobacco use, and from 1999 to 2000, eight out of the 10 highest earning Hollywood films, rated for viewers 13 years of age and above, featured smoking, according to research carried out by the Centre for Tobacco Control, Research and Education at the University of California in San Francisco.

“No Tobacco Day” demonstrations in the world’s biggest film and fashion capitals – Bollywood, home of the world’s largest film industry, based in Mumbai, India; and Hollywood, the US movie capital – will highlight how the two industries are used to promote tobacco.

“I applaud those in the worlds of film and fashion who take the courageous step of walking away from tobacco,” WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said, echoing the need to stop endorsing tobacco products. “I applaud countries for standing in unison against a menace that kills 4.9 million people every year and threatens our future generations.”