Exposure to Smoking in Movies Influences Teens to Become Established Smokers A study released in the September journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows a direct link between viewing smoking in movies and established adolescent smoking. Conducted by Dr. James Sargent at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover, New Hampshire, and funded by the National Cancer Institute and American Legacy Foundation, the study, Exposure to Smoking Depictions in Movies: Its Association with Established Adolescent Smoking, is the first national study to indicate that exposure to smoking in movies predicts whether young people will become long-term smokers. According to the study, youth who are exposed to movie smoking double their risk of becoming long-term smokers, who are at high risk to suffer the consequences of adult tobacco addiction. This research adds to the growing amount of evidence showcasing the significant negative effect of depictions of smoking in Hollywood movies on young people and heightens public health concerns. Past research shows that 400,000 people die each year from tobacco-related disease, about the same number of youth smokers that movies recruit annually. Nearly five-thousand U.S. adolescents aged 10 to 14 years were followed over a period of two years to determine their exposure to movie smoking and whether they were considered "established smokers," which researchers defined as the adolescent having smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their short lifetime. Established smoking was also measured by other characteristics of smoking and addiction, including whether or not the adolescent considered him/herself a smoker or if the adolescent experienced strong cravings to smoke, among other measures. The study showed that exposure to smoking in movies predicts established smoking; all else being equal, adolescents with high movie smoking exposure were about twice as likely to become established smokers. The effects of movie smoking persisted throughout three surveys as the adolescents aged over a 2-year period.