[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

All this time I've been thinking about how pleasantly surprised I was that the references to smoking weren't cut from the films, and it turns out that there were sneaky anti-smoking references in there! I'm genuinely disappointed.

I don't think that these scenes were included as overt "anti-smoking propaganda", but rather as reflections of current attitudes towards smoking.

If the "anti-smoking police" had got their hands on these films, there would have been no pipeweed whatsoever. In the UK, there is a move to take scenes of smoking into account when certifying a film.

Having said that, it may be that it was felt (probably by others than Jackson) that oblique references to the harmful effects of smoking were necessary in a "family" film that otherwise portrays pipe smoking in a positive light (the scene with Gandalf and Bilbo watching over the Party in FotR, for example).