Do Movies Cause Smoking?

A new study from the Dartmouth Med School has linked the movies teens see to their likihood of taking up smoking. This gets reported by the press as "nearly 40 percent of U.S. adolescents who give cigarette smoking a try do so because they saw it in movies" (Reuters). I don't think that's what the study says. Compare that lead line with the actual methodology of the study:

The research team counted cigarette smoking activity in 601 popular films released in the U.S. from 1988 to 1999, and they found an average of five occurrences of tobacco use per movie. Their student subjects were asked to identify films they had seen from a list of 50 randomly selected titles. Based on the movies they had seen and the amount of smoking in each movie, the adolescents were split into four levels of exposure to movie smoking.

If possible, I'll have a look at the actual report to see exactly how they corrected for other factors involved in the decision to smoke. While there might indeed be a correlation between what movies you watch and whether or not you smoke, that does not imply that the movies "caused" the smoking. Certain groups of people are more inclined to take up smoking, and they also might be more likely to see certain types of movies where smoking is more prevalent.

The inevitable outcome of this information is, of course, that we'll be hearing a good deal of bluster from politicans about "setting an example for the children" and proposals to ban smoking in movies.