May contain adult scenes....

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by skip spence

The reasoning is that kids who watch cool people smoke on a big screen associate smoking with being cool, and then pick up the habit to be like their role-model. If more kids start smoking, more of them also carry on with the habit as grown ups and more go on to develop life-threatening smoking-related diseases statistically. And this consists of a loss for the state/city council, both in a pure monetary sense and in terms of political achievement, as saving lives (statistically) is a good thing from the perspective of the democratically elected government. Whereas Johnny Depp might get kids into smoking fags, Gandalf probably won't, but bureaucratic regulations can't distinguish between such subtleties.

The lifelong cynic in me is generally unwilling to grant those wishing to exercise such authority any altruistic motivations when it come to things like this. They may say that's where they're coming from in order to justify it, but do statistics really indicate children learn to smoke by watching people do it in movies?
From my own experience it seems teenagers mostly pick up the habit because their friends do it, and the friends usually had parents who smoked. It doesn't appear to me watching a movie character smoke during the film has much of an influence. It never did for me, at any rate, and the war on smoking was not even in full force when I was a child. I remember buying candy cigarettes from the store. I had a friend or two that smoked cigarettes in my teenage years, but most of my exposure to it was at home. I had a grandfather who smoked cigarettes, and my father has been a pipe smoker as long as I can remember. Had I chosen to pick up the habit, I believe pipe smoking is what it would have been.
My wife was a smoker when we met, though she later quit. She says her associates were the most influential factor in her starting.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

The lifelong cynic in me is generally unwilling to grant those wishing to exercise such authority any altruistic motivations when it come to things like this.

Agreed. That's why I said the issue is better understood in terms of economics (self-interest basically) than in terms of morality.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

They may say that's where they're coming from in order to justify it, but do statistics really indicate children learn to smoke by watching people do it in movies?

Personally I'm convinced they do, to a degree. Now I don't smoke (much) but when I started in my teens the main reason was social I think, trying to build a self-image I was happy with. Images from movies, music videos etc. probably played a major part influencing me. Friends, parents, idols did so too.

But if that justifies censorship is an altogether different question. I certainly don't think so. If we can't make our own life decisions, life's quite pointless.