It has been 50 years since the U.S. Surgeon General first linked smoking tobacco to cancer and now several health officials are trying extra hard to finish the fight.
According to the Los Angeles Times, acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak will call upon Hollywood to stop using tobacco images in films accessible to children. In the latest report on tobacco, Lushniak and other U.S. health officials expanded further the dangers of smoking.
"Anything that can be done to help reduce that imagery, to reduce that sense that smoking is a norm, is helpful," Lushniak told the LAT, prior to a White House conference on the report. "We would like to partner with the film industry to realize this has an effect on the health of our nation."
The report estimated young people are exposed to nearly 15 million images of tobacco use in films rated for kids. The report said this is a growing media trend that has been increasing for the past two years.
"The current rate of progress in tobacco control is not fast enough, and more needs to be done to end the tobacco epidemic," read the report. "Youth who are exposed to images of smoking in the movies are more likely to smoke; those who get the most exposure to onscreen smoking are about twice as likely to begin smoking as those who get the least exposure."
Dr. Luther Terry released the first report on smoking in 1964 warning the public that tobacco leads to cancer, CNN reported. Since, "tobacco has killed more than 20 million people prematurely," CDC director Tom Frieden said in the report's forward.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has estimated that the total number of smokers has dropped to 18 percent in 2012. Lushniak said that accounts for 45 million people, including three million kids, also noting one in every three cases of cancer is caused by tobacco.
Despite the decline, the LAT reported, the number of young people smoking increased from 1.9 million in 2002 to 2.3 million in 2012. Frieden said the trend among young people is of the utmost importance to curb tobacco smoking.
"As inconceivable as it is, tobacco is even worse than we knew," said Frieden. "It appears cigarettes are getting more lethal. If you look at smokers over the years, even though they're smoking less, they're dying more."
