PART II - FINDING A RELATION WITH INFLUENCE ON YOUNGSTERS

It is important to find out that how people perceive tobacco depiction in movies. Whether they thought it to be important ingredient of expression and also if they though that by not showing tobacco in movies it might even affect their decision to watch movies. Since most people are not aware about the research on tobacco and are even not aware about the exact science of tobacco, except for the fact that they have an unclear idea that it is somewhat injurious to the health. We asked more basic questions which all of the respondents could answer and could be easily interpreted. 

On asking the respondents, if they thought that the quality of movies would be affected by restraining movies from showing smoking scenes/tobacco. 96.1% respondents said that banning tobacco in movies will not affect the quality of movies in any way. Only 43 respondents thought otherwise and 36 of them were either smokers or had a person in his/her family who consumed tobacco. 

The second question asked was, if restricting tobacco depiction would affect their decision to watch movies. Again over 96.6% respondents said that it would not affect their decision to watch movies. Only 38 respondents thought otherwise; out of which 30 were either smokers or had a member in the family consuming tobacco. 

It shows that the common man is not concerned about any creativity/artistic freedom/commercial freedom or the quality of movies being affected by non-depiction of smoking/tobacco in movies.

We employed two different methods in our survey to arrive at a clear idea about the influence of tobacco scenes on youngsters. We had a set of indirect questions in the form of general opinion and another set of direct questions. Both the responses are presented under the head “Opinion” and “Actual admitted influence.” The figures below show the impact of tobacco in movies on he young minds. 

Opinion: A total of 62.9% respondents were of definite opinion that showing tobacco in movies can influence some youngsters to smoke. In response to another question, 57.5% respondents further said that some youngsters may be actually following the movie stars in smoking as they do in fashion and other things. 

Actual admitted influence: Four related questions were asked from the respondents to understand the influence tobacco creates on them. We asked; if they ever got impressed by the way film star smoked; if they had felt the desire to smoke; did they ever felt a desire to hold a cigarette in their hand with a style and if they had ever held an article like pencil/pen like a cigarette in emulation of any film star. 

35.3% of the youngsters admitted being impressed by the way one or another star smoked on screen and 25.7% admitted having felt a desire to smoke in their style. 45.6% admitted that even though they have never smoked but still they did felt the desire to at least hold a cigarette in their hand. A large number of youngsters, 59.3% admitted holding articles like pencil, pen, etc. like a cigarette and pretending to smoke a cigarette in emulation of a film star. Out of these 481 under 18 youngsters answering in affirmation, 48.4% admitted of having at least one member of his/her family consuming tobacco or having tasted tobacco. This puts them into a very high risk group. Such a high number of youngsters admitting holding an article akin a cigarette points towards their favourable attitude towards tobacco and is certainly alarming. This pushes the impressionable youngsters to the edge.  

Since these children and youngsters openly admit being impressed by the smoking film stars so under such a scenario any added risk factor like peer pressure, easy access, tobacco companies’ incentive, etc. is enough to push these highly vulnerable kids into tobacco addiction. 

Even if all the indirectly admitted impression created by smoking movie stars is ignored for discussion sake still the figure of over 25% youngsters admitting having a desire to smoke at least once in the style of their favourite actor, in itself, is frightening. 

Considering that India is a young country and approximately 500 million people are under 18, we can easily estimate that much over 125 million of the children and youngsters fall into the high risk category and tobacco depiction in movies appears to be one of its major causes. 

A high 33.7% of youngsters recalled at least one movie showing a tobacco brand. These respondents could correctly recollect the name of the movie showing a tobacco product, or the tobacco brand or both. Out of these respondents 67% had a member in their house who was a present smoker or the respondent had himself experimented with tobacco and 72% of these youngsters were under 18. 

Whether the brand recognition preceded the experimentation with tobacco or otherwise could not be ascertained. However a large number 33% of these answering respondents who had no direct exposure to tobacco could also recollect tobacco brand in movies. 

A total of 168 respondents reported being regular smokers and 136 admitted having an occasional puff (whom we consider as smokers). Another 77 said that they were ex-tobacco users i.e. they are presently not consuming any tobacco product (smoking, chewing, snuffing and others; all included) and 37 said that they consume other tobacco products. 

A total of 251 out of these people opted to fill the portion of the survey form which was exclusively for people who had at any point of time consumed tobacco or were current tobacco users. 

 There were four specific questions asking if they had ever lighted a cigarette in the style of a film star or held a cigarette in the style of a film star. Their attitude on if they considered smoking to be a style statement was also sought and if they thought that watching film stars smoke was a reason for their good opinion about tobacco. 

113 of the 251 respondents or 45% admitted lighting a cigarette in the style of a film star, 158 or around 63% admitted having held a cigarette in the style of a film star at least once. 144 or 57.4% of the respondents thought smoking to be a style or fashion statement and 76 of these respondents thought that movies can be one of the reason for their this favourable impression about tobacco. 

It is worth noting that while around 63% of the respondents among tobacco users admitted having held a cigarette in the style of the film stars while only 45.6% from the consolidated respondents had said that they felt a desire to hold a cigarette in the style of film stars. This significant increase in percentage of admission by people who had experimented with tobacco about holding a cigarette in the style of film stars is worth taking note of. This shows that there is a strong influence created by the smoking film stars on youngsters.