Should Hollywood ban smoking in films?

Anti smoking groups have been campaigning hard for a ban of images of tobacco in all but films with R or NC-17 ratings.

Unsatisfied by an earlier promise that the movie industry’s trade group made to consider tobacco use as a factor in film ratings, the six largest studio owners have been patching together individual responses to those who want cigarettes out of films rated G, PG or PG-13.

The anti-smoking lobby argue that on screen smoking implies that more people smoke than the actual percentage of the population that do smoke and that with product placement incentives smoking and tobacco products that appear on the movies is on the rise.

The issues relating to smoking may only be the beginning as Hollywood is now facing the opening salvos of other groups campaigning to rid movies of portrayals of gun use, transfat consumption or other behavior that can be proved harmful to the public.

Universal Pictures is to implement the wishes of its parent company General Electric, that, with few exceptions, “no smoking incidents should appear in any youth-rated film” produced by the studio or its sister units, Focus, Rogue and Working Title Films.

Bill Condon who writes and directs films has argued that movies are supposed to reflect reality and to ban on screen smoking is to remove a detail that is one of the more defining aspects of a lifestyle.

Do you think that the depictions of smoking actually encourages the young to smoke? Will the absence of smoking detract from a movies realism?

Would the classic movie Casablanca still have been a classic without the smoking?

Participate in this weeks open survey Should Hollywood ban smoking in films?