E-Cigarettes: Coming Soon to a Theater Near You!

Well, it was just a matter of time before the e-cigarette profiteers started exploiting another strategy from Big Tobacco’s marketing playbook: product placement in major motion pictures.

Reports have surfaced this week that Canadian-based SmokeStik International has paid the producers of Cymbeline to place its drug delivery system in the lips of actress Milla Jovovich throughout the film.  Early word is that signs promoting the brand are also visible in the film.  This is particularly ironic since e-cigarettes are banned in Canada, so this Canadian company has to ram their poison down U.S. throats in order to profit from people’s addiction.

The fact that this type of promotion is making a comeback is partly becasue the FDA has dragged its feet to finalize minimal regulations on the products.  In addition, the ban on tobacco product placement in movies that was contained in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement does not extend to emerging products.

That doesn’t mean that tobacco use disappeared from movies.  In fact, tobacco use is still incredibly common in youth-rated movies (G, PG, and PG-13), and Big Tobacco continues to find clever ways to get brand names into the hands of celebrities (movie posters, photos supplied with national interviews).  While the practice of making direct payments to studios to include tobacco brand names in movies has been banned, there is no doubt that indirect payments are being made to slide this brand name imagery into this type of collateral media.

Tobacco is displayed in photos provided for marketing materials for the movie "Fight Club", including a film review (left), a national interview with Brad Pitt, and the DVD cover.  Notice the product placement for Marlboro lights included in the photo of Brad Pitt.

In all likelihood, this practice has already started with e-cigarette manufacturers.  Since the original purchase of Blu E-Cigarettes by Lorillard in the spring of 2012, those products have appeared in multiple platforms.  This includes the high-profile use by Julia Louis-Dreyfus during the 2014 Golden Globe Awards, and the use by Kevin Spacey during a scene in House of Cards.

Other characters have used electronic cigarettes in major motion pictures, including Dennis Quaid in Beneath the Darkness, and Johnny Depp in TheTourist.  This type of use helps to normalize an addictive drug.  However, the six-figure contract to promote the SmokeStik brand name within a movie takes the marketing of these drug delivery devices to a new level… a level that was so successful with traditional tobacco products that the activity was banned nearly two decades ago.

 

Those of us that are working on the issue of tobacco use in movies realize that these media depictions of smoking have an incredible impact on youth tobacco initiation. In fact, in January 2014 the United States Surgeon General went so far as to suggest that films depicting smoking deserve an automatic R-Rating:

“Actions that would eliminate depiction of tobacco use in movies that are produced and rated as appropriate for children and adolescents could have a significant benefit in reducing the numbers of youth who become tobacco users. It has been suggested that the movie industry modernize the Motion Picture Association of America voluntary rating system to eliminate smoking from youth-rated films by awarding any film with smoking or other pro-tobacco imagery an R rating (with exceptions for real historical figures who actually smoked or films that actually depict the dangers of smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke). Further, if such a change in the [MPAA] rating system would reduce in-theater exposures from a current median of about 275 annual exposures per adolescent from PG-13 movies down to approximately 10 or less, adolescent smoking would be reduced by an estimated 18%.”

Here’s the thing:  strategies that have been used by Big Tobacco to encourage youth tobacco use are now being employed to encourage youth electronic cigarette use.  Those strategies include use by characters in movies and specific brand product placement.  We know that it worked in the past, otherwise the next generation of nicotine profiteers would not have bothered to recycle them.

“I don’t see a problem with glamorizing something that saves lives,” said Bill Marangos, Smokestik’s Chief Executive Hypocrite. "I think we're, as an industry, trying to show people that there is a different way and it's an acceptable way to smoke."

That's the goal.  Make addiction acceptable, especially among kids.

The long-term morbidity and mortality of electronic cigarettes has not been established, and it will not be for 2-3 decades. Mr. Marangos claims that we should promote his product in movies because they are live-savers are at their best disingenuous; at their worst, his unsubstantiated claims will be responsible for addicting another generation of young people to a dangerous chemical with undetermined consequences.

And remember:  by the time all of this is sorted out, Mr. Marangos will have cashed the checks.

For more information on the issue of movie smoking and its impact on youth tobacco initiation, visit SmokeScreeners, Smoke-Free Movies, and Scene Smoking.