Films subsidized by state promote smoking

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California taxpayers subsidize major motion pictures that depict smoking, which promotes the unhealthy habit and undermines efforts to keep young people from lighting up, according to UCSF researchers.

In a report published Tuesday in PLoS Medicine, the researchers say the state and other governments may be violating their own health policies and goals when they subsidize or offer tax credits to makers of movies that directly or indirectly promote smoking.

"We have a situation where governments today are now spending taxpayer money to sell cigarettes to kids," said study co-author Stanton Glantz, a UCSF professor of medicine and director of the Smoke Free Movies Project, which is based at the university.

UCSF released the information at the same time California is considering extending the film subsides that began in 2009. AB1069, which would authorize $500 million in subsidies for another five years, is scheduled to be heard Thursday in the state Senate Appropriations Committee.

"U.S. movies with smoking are toxic to kids. They are a major - if not the leading - factor in kids now being recruited to smoke," said Jonathan Polansky, a UCSF consultant and co-author of the article.

About 70 percent of all PG-13 movies subsidized under California's program depict smoking, the researchers found. UCSF officials also cited previous studies from other researchers that estimate exposure to onscreen smoking accounts for 44 percent of all adolescent smokers.

The California Film Commission, which administers the state's Film and Television Tax Credit Program, said the 2009 law requires the group to base eligibility for the credit on the production type, not the content, said Amy Lemisch, the commission's director.

A report by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. found California's Film and Television Tax Credit generated $3.8 billion in economic activity, more than 20,000 jobs and more than $200 million in additional tax revenue in its first two years.

UCSF researchers said no taxpayer money should be used to subsidize films that feature smoking.

Any changes to AB1069 would have to be proposed by lawmakers. Ben Golombek, spokesman for Assemblyman Felipe Fuentes, D-Sylmar (Los Angeles County), who wrote the bill, said his office received a letter last week from the American Heart Association concerned about the issue and no amendments to the bill have been proposed.