TV Tobacco Affects Smoking Rates

How much smoking people see on television does in-fact influence their own likelihood to take up the habit, according to the results of an analytical study.

The study, published in Tobacco Control, a British Medical Journal Group publication, details the results of a long-term analysis that cross-references prevalence of smoking on television shows with cigarette use rates over the past 60 years.

Legislation was passed in 1970 that banned the advertisement of cigarettes on television, but smoking in adult television dramas themselves was never restricted. Naturally, with the waxing and waning of public opinion of tobacco use, the prevalence of smoking in televised dramas has varied over the decades.

To collect data for their study, the researcher watched 1838 hour of popular prime-time television that aired between 1955 and 2010. While they watched, the researchers recorded how much of the show depicted main characters smoking or handling tobacco.

The resulting numbers showed that "tobacco events" have fallen nearly 17-fold, with 1961 television dramas depicting 4.96 instances of smoking per hour, and 2010 television drama only depicting 0.29 instance of smoking per hour of air-time.

The trend of decline in smoking prevalence in television was strikingly similar to a decline in overall tobacco use among U.S. citizens over the same number of years.

Using various national databases and their collected data, the researchers were also able to determine that for every one less tobacco event per hour of programming in a two-year window, adults living at that time smoked two fever packs of cigarettes over that same time frame, compared to the previous years.

Still, critics of the study raise some important points. For one, a cause-and-effect relationship was never established. The study showed that there was an association between television smoking and real-world smoking habits, but did not prove which influenced the other. It may be just as likely that public opinions of smoking influenced television prevalence of smoking more than depictions of smoking influenced public habit.

David McNamee of Medical News Today also raised the point that the study failed to differentiate if tobacco use on television was being portrayed positively or negatively to the audience. It seems reasonable to assume that a despised villain frequently smoking would do little to inspire viewers to smoke.

Still, the study does provide interesting data that supports the theory that television smoking and the national habit do indeed influence one another, even if the "how" factor remains unclear.