Study says tobacco is advertised in films despite ban

Hollywood actors are being blamed for endorsing well-known cigarette brands in films, despite a tobacco industry ban on payments for "product placements" in movies.

US researchers say that the use of actors to promote top tobacco brands has actually increased tenfold since the voluntary ban was introduced in the States in 1990.

the research team from Dartmouth Medical School suggest that tobacco companies may be flouting the ban on product placements or Hollywood directors may simply be using certain popular brands to create more realism.

In the study, published in The Lancet, the researchers studied the top 25 US box office films for each year from 1988 to 1997.

The 1990 ban was incorporated into the US tobacco industry's self-regulatory advertising code in a bid to stop government regulation of product placements in films.

Until then, tobacco companies had paid tens of thousands of pounds to place their cigarettes in the hands of a film's star - seen as the most lucrative form of product placement.

Other product placements in films included shots of billboard advertising, shopfronts, logos and brand names featured on-screen.

But the code is only voluntary and does not ban the featuring of certain brands - only payment for endorsements.

There was little difference in the prevalence of recognisable cigarette brands appearing in films before or after the ban, but researchers charted a dramatic increase in the use of actors to promote products.

Before 1990, just 1% of the top US box office films showed actors with a recognisable brand of cigarette on screen, but in the years after the ban, 11% of the films showed a major or minor actor endorsing a brand.