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Tobacco kills nearly five million people a year
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LOS
ANGELES, November 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - World health
officials on Wednesday, November 13, accused Hollywood movie makers of
helping spread death and disease across the globe by making smoking seem
glamorous on the silver screen.
Representatives
of the United Nations’ World Health Organization (WHO) and the
American Medical Association (AMA) gathered in the heart of Hollywood to
take aim at the industry that was born there, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
“Tobacco
kills nearly five million people a year, one million more than it did
just a decade ago,” said Chitra Subramaniam of the WHO’s Tobacco
Free Initiative.
“As
countries worldwide grapple with the devastating impact of tobacco use,
the entertainment industry must acknowledge the role it plays in shaping
behavior, particularly for youth(s) who are susceptible to on-screen
glamorization of smoking.”
The
health chiefs opened fire on Tinseltown amid charges that movie makers
appear to be colluding with the tobacco industry to get stars to light
up on screen in a powerful and outlawed form of subliminal advertising.
They
condemned the U.S. entertainment industry for its alleged “supporting
role in fostering a worldwide epidemic of death and disease” by
featuring cigarettes in movies.
Reports
by anti-smoking groups show that, despite a voluntary 1989 tobacco
industry ban on strategic product placement in films, cigarettes got 50
percent more screen time in 1999-2000 than they did three years earlier.
A
report by the Massachusetts Public Interest Group said that two out of
three “tobacco scenes” in the 50 most popular films released between
April 2001 and March last year were in films aimed at youthful
audiences.
“(This)
only serves to reinforce smoking as a desirable behavior and encourages
young people to experiment with tobacco products at home and become
addicted,” said AMA official Doctor Ronald Davis.
The
experts said that studies had proved that youngsters who see their
favorite stars lighting up on screen are 16 times more likely to start
smoking than other youths.
“American
movies are a key vehicle for promoting tobacco addiction,” said
University of California, San Francisco Professor Stanton Glantz, who
has conducted studies into Hollywood’s role in tobacco promotion.
A
study he published in Tobacco Control earlier this year used previously
secret tobacco industry documents to show that tobacco firms continued
to push their products in films throughout the 1990s, despite the ban.
Stars
like Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke in 1998’s “Great
Expectations,” Jim Carrey in 2000s “Me, Myself and Irene,” and
last year’s Oscar-nominated “In the Bedroom,” were used to show
off cigarette brands, it said.
“Hollywood
needs to stop doing the industry’s dirty work. If Hollywood is doing
Big Tobacco’s dirty work for money, they are corrupt; if they are
giving away millions of dollars of advertising free, they are stupid.”
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James Dean
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Glantz
said that cigarette makers used the “excitement, sex, wealth and
power” of the cinema to get more youngsters to smoke as they
recognized the power of movies was “much greater than that of a
traditional cigarette ad.”
“It’s
quite clear that Hollywood is carrying the tobacco industry’s water
and has become probably the most important pro-tobacco device in the
world today,” Glantz told AFP.
The
health officials and lobbyists called on Hollywood to stop showing
tobacco brands on screen aimed to encourage adult ratings for films, and
to run anti-tobacco ads before films they depict smoking.
While
the industry strongly denies using mass media entertainment to push
their products since 1989, Glantz said that documents he uncovered
showed a “long and deep relationship with Hollywood” that continued
into the 1990s.
In
a fatwa to IslamOnline, Mufti Ibrahim Desai said, “It is a universally
accepted that smoking has many serious health and life hazards amongst
which is lung cancer. These hazards affect not only the smoker himself
but those around him as well.
“Shari`ah
has stressed the importance of being in good health to the extent that
the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, even advised Muslims in
all ages to strike a balance in eating and drinking so as to evade any
harmful effects on the health.”
Although
“smoking did not exist in the time of the Prophet, peace and blessings
be upon him,” Mufti Desai said, “but our great religion of Islam has
laid down general principles from which many laws are derived. From
these principles, Muslim scholars have come to the conclusion that
smoking is prohibited (Haram).”
“Cigarettes
consist of many poisonous substances and furthermore, the smoker
indulges in a slow suicidal act by smoking this poison.”
