MUMBAI: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) have joined Hollywood Unfiltered, an entertainment industry-led initiative to raise awareness of the public health consequences of depicting smoking in movies and television.
Hollywood Unfiltered is a voluntary effort aimed at educating members of the entertainment industry about how on-screen smoking impacts young people, while encouraging the industry to take action to reduce the glamorisation of smoking in their creative work.
“When we look back 10 years from now, this will be a defining moment,” said Lisa Paulsen, who as president and CEO of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, spearheaded the creation of the coalition, which also includes Picture Quitting, an EIF smoking cessation clinical program created in partnership with the Motion Picture and Television Fund with support from the Motion Picture Industry Pension and Health Plan, the nation’s first industry-led comprehensive smoking cessation program.
The Entertainment Industry Foundation, which has spearheaded the movement, and its many partners have already invested millions of dollars in Hollywood Unfiltered and Picture Quitting. In the past 18 months, their accomplishments include: 1) Expanding Picture Quitting from a pilot program to a comprehensive smoking cessation program, offering counseling, medication and ongoing support services, now available to 100,000 members of the entertainment industry. The success rates of Picture Quitting are more than twice the national average for smoking cessation programs; 2) The group produced a national public service announcement featuring legendary Hollywood photographer Phil Stern, a former smoker, who now suffers from emphysema, and acclaimed movie director Brett Ratner to urge a new generation to seek out the facts about smoking and encourage smokers to get help if they want to quit; 3) Educational materials have been distributed throughout the entertainment community raising awareness about the ways they can make a difference.
