R-rating for smoking:

Tobacco incidents in youth-rated films doubled between 2010 and 2012, returning to levels of a decade ago – and health experts want it to stop.

A new report by the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) shows that half of 2012's youth-rated movies, delivered an estimated 14.8 billion tobacco impressions to cinema audiences, a 169% increase from 2010. (Impressions are tobacco incidents multiplied by number of tickets sold per film).

The number of tobacco incidents per movie has risen since 2011 in movies made by Time Warner, News Corp, Sony and independent movie houses. See infographic below.

Health experts say that the movie industry should adopt voluntary, evidence-based policies that would reduce kids’ exposure to smoking in movies.

These policies might include assigning an R-rating to future movies with tobacco imagery or references, with exceptions for portrayals of actual people who actually used tobacco (as in documentaries or biographical dramas) or depictions of tobacco's real health effects, and no brand identification.

"Movies are more powerful than traditional tobacco ads," says Professor Stanton Glantz of UCSF.

"We know that the more smoking that youth see in movies, the more likely they are to smoke. This explosion in on-screen smoking puts hundreds of thousands of young people around the world at risk of addiction, disease and premature death."

A 2012 report by the US Surgeon General found that the US film industry has a long, documented history of collaborating with the US tobacco industry to promote smoking and its brands. It has been known for years that on-screen smoking harms their young audience, but the industry as a whole has not adopted policies recommended by international public health authorities such as the World Health Organisation, as well as health authorities in countries such as the US, Australia, Canada and the UK – to name a few.

According to VIC Health, in Australia:

• 8 out of 10 new smokers are children or adolescents

• 70,000 young people start smoking every year – that’s about 191 per day

• a child who starts smoking at 14 years of less is five times more likely to die of lung cancer than a person who starts at 24 years, and 15 times more likely than someone who has never smoked.

Public health groups and advocates worldwide believe Hollywood needs to “detoxify” children’s movies so parents can choose entertainment that is not pushing tobacco.