Movies widening the smoke ring?

What is common to Deepti Naval, Amitabh Bachchan, his daughter-in-law Aishwarya and Rani Mukherjee? Well, they’ve all generated smoke with the opponents of Lady Nicotine.

In the early 80s the dusky Miss Chashme Buddoor Chamko had modelled for the MS Cigarettes leading to a controversy that outlived the brand.

The anti-tobacco lobby took on the Big B when posters of Aks showed him blowing out smoke rings,  Sofia’s (Aishwarya) smudging a cigarette with her dark lipstick on the Guzaarish posters made them see red again.

The latest of course is Rani Mukerjee’s smoking pen-pusher in No One Killed Jessica.

So what are these protests all about? Is this the new ‘moral high’ or just ‘15 seconds of fame,’ with a sound byte thrown in?
No say the anti-tobacconists. They point out how a recent survey, conducted by two health-related NGOs, has revealed that 52% of youth who take up smoking do so due to the influence of movies.

Vincent Nazareth, chairman of Crusade Against Tobacco, feels children should be taught about harmful affects of smoking in school. “I have sent 25 letters with over one lakh student’s signatures to the Ministry of Health about incorporating a chapter on tobacco and its ill-effects in school syllabus,” says Nazareth who adds, “I don’t think authorities are serious about anti-smoking campaigns. That’s why people are still smoking.

Strict implementation of laws is more important than announcing bans.” According to him if this is done, “Youngsters will not simply try to ape Shah Rukh because he’s smoking in a movie.” 
But are movies alone to blame?  What about the peer-group and the people surrounding the young ‘impressionable’ adults? Don’t they have an equal if not more strong an influence? 

“One must not forget that a child is influenced most by parents. And if a parents smokes, it is bound to affect the child who then becomes genetically prone to dependence. Secondly, since they see parents as hero figures there is this urge to imitate them. Thirdly, passive smoking makes a child more likely pick up smoking later,” says psychiatrist Yusuf Matcheswala.

Abhishek Gupta should know about it. This 33-year-old senior manager would easily finish a pack of cigarettes a day. But things changed when his four-year-old asked him if she could join him too. At first he remembers laughing and saying it is ‘bad’, but she wondered why he smoked if it was bad. “I was stunned when she asked me for a smoke. Till then I had not realised how my actions impact her. My wife had been warning me, , but I’d ignored her,” he confesses.

Even unintentional acts can set off a domino effect on children. In fact Matcheswala points out how late adolescence is the time to be most wary. “When a child is around 15, s/he starts focusing on trendsetters and looking at them as role models. They do not have the maturity to realise if this is harmful. This role model can be anyone — a friend, an icon or an actor,”

There are of course those who disagree. Actor, model and mother of two, Pooja Bedi, says, “If it is that easy to pick up something shown on screen and it is going to be a bad influence on young minds then nothing should be shown at all. Rape, suicide, youngsters running away from home, all this should be banned from being the subject of any audio-visual. Why only single out smoking?” and adds, “Elders and peers play a far greater role in a child’s life than some star smoking on screen. Good values have to be instilled in a child so that they don’t ape others blindly,” she concludes.

Exactly this has been 20-year-old student Vinay Sawant’s experience. For him being popular was more important than anything else when he joined junior college few years ago. “I was never popular in school, but I wanted to change that. I began hanging out with my seniors,” he remembers.

What started as an innocent friendship soon turned into smoking lessons. Soon he was not only smoking but drinking too. His concerned mother took him to a psychiatrist on finding a pack of cigarettes in his bag. He is now being counselled to give up and is taking medication for withdrawal. Sawant admits he feels a urge to smoke when he sees others smoking. Does that extend to films and film posters, we ask and he laughs, “I think the urge has to do with smelling the tobacco fumes and we still don’t have that technology.”

Aren’t we glad?