Contrary to a much publicized announcement last May, Hollywood#'s rating system fails to warn parents that most movies feature smoking. Young audiences around the world are still being bombarded with billions of tobacco impressions every time an actor lights up. This isn#,t a matter of personal taste or censorship. It#,s a major public health challenge. The tobacco industry rakes in $4 billion in lifetime sales through Hollywood movies that recruit kids to smoke every year.

Since the major studios still won#,t take action, the community must.

As a first step, this newspaper can start including tobacco content in movie listings.

In the six months following the Motion Picture Association#,s announcement that it #&considers#8 smoking when rating movies,#8 Hollywood movies delivered an estimated 11 billion tobacco impressions to theater audiences.

Second, the rest of us can write the studios#, parent companies - Disney, General Electric, News Corp., Time Warner, and Viacom#*and tell them to stop recruiting 390,000 new teen smokers a year for the tobacco industry. By demanding that all future movies with smoking be rated #&R,#8 this would treat tobacco use as seriously as it treats use of the “F-word.#8

The week of Feb. 18-22 is the International Week of Action, when kids and their parents in more than a dozen countries around the world will protest America#,s most toxic export #* blockbuster movies with tobacco imagery that arrives on screens without warning. Tobacco will kill 5 million people worldwide. That number is expected to double unless tobacco promotion is halted #- including tobacco product placement in the movies we love.

Tim Haskins, Ashley Cifaratta

and Niomi McNabb

Auburn High School

These students are members of Reality Check and speak on behalf of the group