Blog # 16 - Revising the CAT-W # 2 Movie and smoking

In this article “Imitation of Film: Here’s smoking at you, Kid”, Nicholas Balakar claims that movie that contain scenes of actors smoking a cigarette are the reason that children are likely to start smoking. I don’t agree with his claim at all, Children start smoking for different reasons I believe. A perfect example is peer-pressure at school; another reason is seeing or living with family members that smoke in the household.  I can relate with the examples that I’m going to give in my essay.

Dr. James D. Sargent from Darthmouth Medical School performs a study on 6,522 children nationwide about their movie-viewing habits. In this study it show children who had the greatest exposure to smoking in movies were more than two and a half times as likely to start smoking as those who had the lowest exposure. Well when I was a kid (around the same age as the study) in school, some friends of mine were smoking because they wanted to see for themselves what the buzz about cigarettes was. Not cause of a movie, they wanted to know why it was bad for kids to smoke and not bad for adults in our life at that moment in our childhood. I tried a cigarette when I was in the 6^th grade, as much of my friends did as well. It was a rumor that if you smoke, girls would be attractive to you and would hang out with you more than if you didn’t smoke. At first I didn’t want to try it, but as more peer-pressure from friends or so called friends I had the more I was willing to try it. But the main reason I started to smoke was when I saw some of my friends with more girls around them. Those girls though a guy that smokes is cool and bad. (Girls like bad boys) So that the main reason I started to smoke cause of girls, and it worked. I was chilling with them more and I was in heaven.  Until it was costing me money to buy cigarettes so I stop. So going to that study that Dr. James D. Sargent, I think his research needs more input on other things that can cause a kid to smoke as he acknowledged on the article

Another reason that the research is not accurate is that as a kid you see your family members as hero or someone that you looked up to, and if you see them smoking as a kid you wouldn’t know if that is wrong what they are doing to their bodies. I remember on time a friend of mine explains why he started to smoke at an early age. He told me that all of his families smokes pack of cigarettes every day, to him it seem normal doing that as well. So living in that environment can cause a child to pick up that habit, if you see your parents doing it, why can’t you? …..  (He was the first in my group of friends that started to smoke and introduce us to that habit as well) Finally I don’t believe that seeing a movie with smoking scene will make you start smoking, to me it takes a lot of things to start that habit.  For me it was girls and the popularity to hang out with them not a movie.