Cigarettes and cinema, an inseparable pair: Only one Oscar best-picture nominee has no smoking

Smoking is making a comeback ― at least in many of the movies and TV shows we love.

Nine out of of this year’s 10 Oscar nominees for best picture featured smoking scenes, including the Victorian-era dramedy "Poor Things" and the satirical literary comedy "American Fiction."

That’s the conclusion of an annual report that measures smoking imagery in streaming TV shows popular among kids and teens and movies. Researchers say such scenes especially imperil impressionable young people, who may overlook the legions of studies that confirm the ill effects of tobacco use.

“Tobacco imagery in movies, TV shows and music videos has become alarmingly pervasive (and) this year’s Oscar best picture nominees are no exception,” says Kathy Crosby, president and CEO of Truth Initiative, the anti-smoking group behind the sixth annual “While You Were Streaming: Lights, Camera, Tobacco?” report.

'Barbie,' set in a world of plastic dolls, is the only Academy Award best-picture nominee without smoking

Nicotine’s harmful and addictive effects are well documented. Nonetheless, every movie up for 2024's best picture award, with the exception of “Barbie,” set in a world of plastic dolls, features smoking scenes.

Admittedly, many of these movies are set in the past, and smoking is used to convey the period when the habit was the norm. They include “Killers of the Flower Moon” (1920s), “Oppenheimer” and “The Zone of Interest” (1940s), “Maestro” (1950s), and “The Holdovers” (1970s).

But others have more contemporary settings, including “Past Lives,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “American Fiction.” Filmmakers who don’t need to show smoking should abstain, the researchers said.

Truth Initiative research shows that exposure to smoking imagery can triple the likelihood of a young person starting on e-cigarettes, Crosby says.

A 2023 Center for Disease Control and Prevention survey of 27,000 adults found cigarette use at an all-time low, with one in nine adults saying they smoked (compared to 42% of adults in the 1960s).

But the same survey found that e-cigarette use continued to rise, with one in seven adults reporting use. The 2023 National Youth Tobacco Survey revealed that more than 2 million high school and middle school students had used nicotine vaping products in the past year alone.

Doctors have long noted that cigarette smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer, heart disease and stroke.

The risks of exposing young people to smoking are especially high when it comes to streaming hits. Tobacco depictions in streaming shows that are popular with 15-to-24-year-olds more than doubled in 2022 from the previous year, the report says.

They include programs such as “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," which the report said featured 306 instances of smoking; HBO teen drama “Euphoria” (200); Netflix's period “Stranger Things” (89); and AMC's “The Walking Dead” (47). Even Fox's “The Simpsons” comes in for criticism, with 195 smoking scenes.

BBC's period piece 'Peaky Blinders' is the worst offender among streaming shows, report says

Among top binge-watched shows, the BBC crime series “Peaky Blinders” led the pack with 893 instances of smoking. The series, starring a leading best actor nominee Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer"), is based on a true story and set a century ago in gritty Birmingham, England.

In the Truth Initiative's last report, Netflix's "The Queen's Gambit" was deemed the worst offender. The latest findings reveal that the networks and platforms that showed the most smoking-related scenes were BBC One (due to "Peaky Blinkers"), Netflix (with 429 depictions, more than double last year), Fox (241), HBO (200) and Amazon Prime (193).

This year's report also singles out research form the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center that reveals 35% of movies released in 2022 featured tobacco imagery.

Among music videos, Truth Initiative says the number of tobacco images more than doubled from 2021 to 2022. Artists whose videos featured smoking include Bruno Mars, Elle King, Miranda Lambert and The Weeknd.

The report also points out that YouTube, which a Pew Research Center Study calls the most popualr platform among teens, is awash in tobacco imagery.

Truth Initiative describes itself as the nation’s largest non-profit dedicated to investigating and eradicating the smoking habit, and wants directors and actors to think twice about including smoking or vaping in their projects. The group also would like to see anti-smoking messaging before and after shows featuring such imagery, as well as a ratings system warning of smoking images.

“Images have power and this report aims educate the Hollywood community to recognize its power and responsibility to change the picture and not be the unwitting spokespersons for the tobacco industry," Crosby says.