One more step on the road to making tobacco smoking illegal in the United States: The Motion Picture Association of America is reevaluating smoking as a factor in rating films, along with language, sex, and violence.

Clearly, smoking is increasingly an unacceptable behavior in our society. …no parent wants their child to take up the habit.

The Directors Guild of America said it was OK with the new guidelines, praising the “delicate balance between addressing important health concerns and safeguarding free expression.”

Cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris said it supports the move.

The MPAA considers the rating system a valuable tool for parents. Whether it is or not depends on the parent.

Some want to go into the vaults and ’strip’ classic movies of their ratings..

Christopher Buckley, who wrote the novel that inspired the satirical film “Thank You for Smoking” said, “I can only hope this means that the MPAA will strip such films as ‘Casablanca’ . . . of their G ratings and relabel them for what they were: insidious works of prosmoking propaganda that led to millions of . . . deaths.”

So, if Dick Van Dyke had lit up in Mary Poppins, the movie would be reclassified. And does this apply to animated films?

I do not smoke, nor have I ever. I just believe this to be one more brick in the wall of censorship. If cigarettes are that bad for us, go ahead and make them unlawful, like pot. Oh, yeah… the tobacco lobbies are huge campaign donators, aren’t they?? Hmmm…

Sources:
Chuck Bennett
MPAA