If you feel like you’re seeing more smoking in movies, music videos and TV, you’re not alone.
Since the beginning of the film industry, Big Tobacco bought itself a starring role. The goal was clear: Use influential celebrities to make tobacco look cool, especially to young people.
“From the late 1930s through the 1940s, two out of three top adult movie stars advertised cigarettes while also smoking on screen,” reports Smoke Free Media.
Think Humphrey Bogart, who was frequently pictured through a haze of smoke before he died of throat cancer.
The practice continued even as the harms of tobacco use were clearly established.
Smoke Free Media adds that, in 1983, the president of Philip Morris International told his marketers: “Smoking is being positioned as an unfashionable, as well as unhealthy, custom. We must use every creative means at our disposal to reverse this destructive trend. I do feel heartened at the increasing number of occasions when I go to a movie and see a pack of cigarettes in the hands of the leading lady.”
People started looking closely at smoking in movies and how it affected tobacco use. This led Congress to investigate it in the late 1980s.
Unfortunately, the practice is coming back. Tobacco is even starting to show up again in films rated as appropriate for kids.
“On-screen smoking, which is often glamorized and portrayed as edgy and cool, persists despite well-established research that it influences young people to start using tobacco,” reports Truth Initiative, a tobacco prevention organization.
University of Chicago researchers noted that 41% of top films released in 2023 showed tobacco, compared to 35% of top films released in 2022.
Eight of the 10 films nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Oscars® contained tobacco images, Truth Initiative said.
And it’s not just happening in theaters. A 2024 Truth Initiative report says the tobacco use in streaming shows popular among 15- to 24-year-olds more than doubled in 2022, exposing nearly 25 million young people.
The list of shows even includes cartoons like The Simpsons and Spongebob Squarepants.
Tobacco use is also common in music videos.
The linkage between teens seeing tobacco imagery and taking up smoking has been clearly established.
A 2017 study noted: “The more youths see smoking on screen, the more likely they are to start smoking; youths who are heavily exposed to onscreen smoking imagery are approximately two to three times as likely to begin smoking as are youths who receive less exposure.”
Until things change in Hollywood, parents can help by checking if movies or TV shows show smoking or vaping—even if the show is made for kids. Talk to your kids about how seeing smoking, vaping, or the use of any nicotine products on screen can make it look cool or okay to do but that using nicotine of any kind is dangerous for their health and incredibly addictive.
Get tips on how to talk with your kids