After months of debate and indecision, the Health and the Information and
Broadcasting Ministries seemed to have decided that smoking in movies is
definitely bad for India and have proposed a series of measures.
Studies have shown that Bollywood movies depicting heroes smoking and drinking
as being cool have influenced behavior in India. A World Health Organization
(WHO) study has shown that the Hindi film industry’s support for smoking
tobacco usage has increased. It said that 89% of films showed prominent
characters smoking and shockingly 27% mocked health warnings about cigarettes.
Another disturbing trend of this report is how children are influenced by
surrogate advertisements and glorification of smoking in movies to pick up a
habit that will have a debilitating
effect on their health.
Another study found that the major reasons for a high incidence of heart
disease in rural India to be a combination of lifestyle issues such as smoking
and wrong diet consisting of high salt, oil, sugar, and
low fiber foods.
In the proposed measures, movies that depict smoking will:
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Automatically get an ‘A’ certificate,
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Require the actor to provide a personal disclaimer, before, during, and at the
end of the movie that smoking is bad for health
-
Scenes that depict historical characters should have scrolling lines that
should be visible during and 1 minute after the movie that smoking is bad for
health