Smoking or secondhand smoking Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Smoking or secondhand smoking - Research Paper Example This article briefly discusses the merits and demerits of this hypothesis and in the end suggests a method of controlling the rising level of smoking in the United States of America. It shall also briefly touch the history of smoking, the reason why it escalated and why it fell. These previous trends are kept as a focal point in the end when a recommendation for action is presented in the conclusion. Smoking and Its Increasing Prevalence Introduction All over the globe including the U.S.A, there is a rising concern by the medical agencies and public health insitutions in regards to the vice of Smoking. They are calling for Hollywood movies that contain scenes where people are smoking; to be rated as adult or explicit. The concept and reasoning behind this outcry is that enforcing such a rating might end up reducing the number of youth who are exposed to such scenes, within the course of watching a movie, that according to them, is one of the most direct causes for young teens to take up smoking and even that, at an early stage of their lives (Cnossen, 2008). With the help of a scientific consensus conducted by a huge spectrum of professional health organizations that includes the World Health Organization, National Cancer Institute and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention displayed that the films and movies which contain scenes in which the actors are smoking acts as a catalyst in inciting the young people to smoke and is the consistent finding of a dose response relationship, and like in any concern in regards to the public health which is related to a dose response. The single best alternative in order to deal with such a problem is lowering the dose, that recalls the topic of discussion. There needs to be the ratings of adult content for any movies which have use of tobacco and live smoking on screen in it (Eysenck, 2006). Simon Chapman and Matthew C. Farrelly published an essay in the PLoS Medicine. They made four arguments in opposi tion to the change of rating of movies that have smoking scenes to adult. The first and foremost point they suggest is that those researches or studies that show the link between acceptance of smoking by teenagers at an early age and their exposure to movies or film scenes that have smoking in them are not in any way controlled, which means that they are free from any sort of manipulation of numerous other factors for instance alcohol, violence, recreation drug portrayal, coarse language and of course sexual content and also smoking. The next point they presented states, that any claims in regards to the exposure to smoking in the movies resulting in an increasing in smoking prevalence in youth is crudely reductionist, while at the same time blatantly ignoring the huge exposure to such scenarios of smoking littered elsewhere throughout the society. Thirdly they further state that in regards to the classification of movies to adult rating, it is a futile gesture since the children ca n access more of such material by using the more popular medium, the internet. Lastly they say there is a merit of concern over the assumption that in case any cause is felt rational enough, the state itself needs to implement the control censor on any and all the cultural artifacts for instance movies, arts, books and theatre that are present within its’ jurisdiction (Chapman & Farrelly, 2011). Discussion The beliefs which Matthew & Simon’