Smoking in the Movies

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This infographic shows that 2016 youth-rated (G, PG, PG-13) movies included more smoking than the year before.
- Incidents per movie increased 21%, from 7.4 to 8.9.
- PG-13 movies that were tobacco-free increased to 65% (43 of 66 movies) from 53% (31 of 59 movies).
- Youth-rated movies delivered 4.5 billion tobacco impressions to theater audiences—a 59% increase from 2015.
Performance by movie studio varied.
- Comcast’s Universal, which averaged a single tobacco incident in its youth-rated movies in 2015, had the most per youth-rated film in 2016 at 17.7.
- The Walt Disney Company, which had the most tobacco incidents per youth-rated film in 2015 at 11.2, had the fewest tobacco incidents per youth-rated films: 1 or less.
- Sony delivered the largest share of youth-rated tobacco impressions at 33% (1.5 billion of 4.5 billion), followed by Comcast’s Universal at 20% (900 million of 4.5 billion) and Twenty-First Century Fox at 19% (858 million of 4.5 billion).
Five of the six so-called major movie companies, all with published corporate tobacco depiction policies (Comcast, Twenty-First Century Fox, Sony, Time Warner, and Viacom) averaged more tobacco incidents in their 2016 youth-rated movies than in their 2015 movies. The Walt Disney Company, which also has a published policy, and the independent movie companies averaged fewer tobacco incidents.

This graph shows that the total number of tobacco incidents in movies has fluctuated over more than 20 years, ranging from a low of 1,612 incidents in 1998 to a high of 3,947 incidents in 2005.
A 5-year reduction to 1,824 incidents reversed in 2010.
After exceeding 2,500 incidents from 2011 to 2014, tobacco incidents in 2015 returned to a level somewhat below 2010, then rebounded to 3,145 incidents in 2016.
Movies rated G and PG accounted for fewer than 1 of every 100 (1%) tobacco incidents in 2016.
Movies rated PG-13 accounted for 26 of every 100 (26%) incidents, down from 30 of every 100 (30%) incidents in 2015.

The number of tobacco impressions delivered to domestic theater audiences reached 30.1 billion in 2005 and then decreased by half over the next 5 years.
From 2010 to 2014, tobacco impressions delivered by PG-13 movies more than doubled, decreased 74% from 2014 to 2015, and returned to 2010 levels in 2016.
Youth-rated movies delivered 28% of all tobacco impressions in 2016, the lowest proportion of all in-theater tobacco impressions since at least 2002.
Almost all the 75% decline in tobacco impressions delivered by youth-rated movies since 2002 is explained by a decline in smoking in movies with larger budgets (more than $50 million).
Movies of all ratings delivered 16.2 billion tobacco impressions to moviegoers in 2016, up 75% from 9.3 billion in 2015, the largest change from one year to the next since at least 2002.