When Will This Prohibition Stop?!?!

http://www.reason.com/news/show/33881.html

http://www.jointogether.org/news/headlines/inthenews/2006/group-wants-r-rating-for.html

http://www.webmd.com/parenting/news/20061009/r-rating-urged-for-smoking-in-movies

This is getting absurd. When does personal responsibility come into play here, or a parents responsibility for their children.

WebMD Claims:

"Can you really tell whether smoking portrayed in movies makes kids start smoking? Yes, says James Sargent, MD, director of the Cancer Prevention Research Program at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, N.H.

Since 1996, Sargent and colleagues have analyzed movies for smoking content. They've also been finding out which movies kids have seen, and whether they smoke.

After accounting for factors linked to smoking behavior and moviegoing frequency, they find that kids who see the most onscreen smoking are more than 2.5 times more likely to start smoking than kids who see the least onscreen smoking."

Junk Science at best, you found a possible correlation, not a cause.

I wager that the vast majority of children in these studies started smoking because of one of two things 1) their parents smoke, or 2) their friends smoke. And rather that rat those people out to the "grown ups" asking the questions, they lie and say the easy cop out answer. The ill of society everybody accepts as an excuse, mass media. "Oh Its not that my Mommy and Daddy suck at parenting me, its the movie that made me smoke", or "Its not that ALL the popular kids at school smoke, its what Its the cowboy in the magazine". C'mon people lets be realistic here. Its bad enough you got the government telling consenting adults what they are allowed to do where now, when will this stop?

Parents - Own the fuck up.

Kids - Get over yourself.

Doctors - find something better to do than harp on an easy target. If we put half the effort into the anti smking campaign as we did fighting Cancer or AIDs or something theyd be fuckin' cured.


Sheesh. Free Country My Ass.

TomC