Smoke Free Movies has launched a series of print advertisements in the Daily Variety and other publications. This advertisement first ran in the Daily Variety on July 12, 2006.

Make your historic contribution to global health without even writing a check.

Sign this pledge to help clear tobacco out of G, PG and PG-13 films. This measure alone will save 60,000 lives each year in the U.S. and countless more lives overseas. Philanthropy takes money. Changing your industry takes something more: Courage.

Leading health organizations endorse these four voluntary policy solutions. To reduce film’s $4.1 billion value to the tobacco industry, add your name now.

I promise to use my personal and professional influence to implement these four unintrusive, effective policies industrywide, beginning with my own company:

1] Rate future smoking “R.” All future films with tobacco images should be rated “R.” The only exceptions should be when the presentation of tobacco clearly and unambiguously reflects the dangers and consequences of tobacco use or is necessary to represent an actual historical figure’s documented use.

2] Certify no payoffs. Producers should post a certificate in the closing credits declaring that nobody on a production with tobacco imagery, of any rating, received anything of value from anyone in exchange for using or displaying tobacco.

3] Run strong anti-tobacco ads. A genuinely strong anti-smoking ad (not one produced by a tobacco company) should run before any film with any tobacco presence, in any distribution channel, regardless of its rating.

4] Stop identifying tobacco brands. There should be no tobacco brand identification in the film nor tobacco brand imagery (such as billboards) in the background of any movie scene.

(Signed)

Please return with your contact info to SFM, UCSF School of Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390. We will not publish your name without your consent.

[SIDEBAR]

How on-screen smoking compares with historical U.S. health challenges...

Challenge Annual deaths

Typhoid 700 (1903)

Measles 7,575 (1920)

Diptheria 15,520 (1921)

Polio 3,145 (1952)

On-screen tobacco exposure: 120,000

...and today’s other leading causes of preventable death

Drugs 28,700

Drunk driving 16,700

Firearms 29,000

HIV 15,800

Homicide 16,150

Obesity 112,000

Suicide 31,500

Traffic (all) 38,250

Be part of the solution at SmokeFreeMovies.ucsf.edu

The R-rating, among other Smoke Free Movies policy proposals, is endorsed by the World Health Organization, American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, American Legacy Foundation, National Parent Teacher Association (PTA), Society for Adolescent Medicine, L.A. County Dept. of Health Services, and others. This project is supported by the Arimathea Fund of the Tides Foundation and other donors. To explore this critical health issue, visit our web site.