Tobacco’s Role in Movies Falls, Alcohol’s Rises
Among the 1,400 movies reviewed in the study, 906 were for youth audiences and 494 were for adults, and they included a total of 500 tobacco brand appearances and 2,433 alcohol brand appearances. Of movies rated for youth audiences, 231 and 1,528 contained tobacco and alcohol brand appearances, respectively.
The most common tobacco brand appearances included Marlboro (33.4% of such appearances), Camel (10%), Kool (5.8%), Winston (4.8%), and Newport (4.4%), while the most common alcohol brand appearances were Budweiser (17.7%), Miller (10.7%), Heineken (5%), Coors, 2.8%), and Corona (2.3%).
The year 2000 marked the beginning of an “exponential decline in brand appearances of 7% per year” for tobacco until 2006, when rates of appearance did not decline much lower than 22 appearances per year. Similarly, minutes of on-screen time followed a linear downward trend in both youth and adult movies over the course of the 14-year period, the largest of which occurred from 1999 to 2000, where the decline was 42.3% in youth movies and 85.4% in adult movies.
The authors found no statistically significant trend overall or with agreement implementation over the study period. However, the authors did note an upward trend in alcohol appearances in youth-rated movies from 80 per year in 1996 to 145 by the end of the study period. There was also a small, statistically significant decline in alcohol screen time in adult movies (-1.9 minutes, 95% CI minus 1.5-minus 3.6) annually.