According to the Health Unit what your children watch may be encouraging them to start smoking.
Health Promoter with the Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit Rebecca Shams says the evidence is clear that movies influence children. She points to research from the World Health Organization, Centres for Disease Control and Ontario Tobacco Research Unit, who all say the more smoking kids see on-screen the more likely they are to smoke. According to Shams they want to take smoking into account when rating films.
According to the Health Unit over 55 per cent of movies released in Ontario over the last decade have included some form of smoking and 86 per cent of those were rated appropriate for children or youth. Sham says the representation on screen is also skewed.
Research in Ontario estimates that if all movies with smoking were rated for adults there would be 95,000 Ontario children or teens that didn’t pick up the habit. This could help prevent more than 30,000 tobacco deaths and save more than a billion on tobacco related healthcare costs according to that same research.
More details on the smoke-free movie campaign can be found here.