Ban on Cigarettes in India

Films have always had an effect on human behaviour. Movie stars created fashion statements, which the masses followed with excitement and joy. Actors and actresses often made heroes and heroines out of ordinary men and women.

On the flip side, cinema had its negative impact on society. Crime and other forms of unacceptable behaviour were picked up from the screen. Habits too. Humphrey Bogart's cigarettes created rings of magic that eventually not only felled him to cancer, but also caused pain and suffering to hundreds of thousands of his fans, who loved to ape the American actor. Sharon Stone in "Basic Instinct" is said to have provoked a revolution among women, many of whom took to smoking cigarettes.

Hundreds of teenagers have got into the habit of smoking after watching their favourite cinema icons puff away. These have been studied and documented. A recent study in the U.S. revealed that films had a powerful effect on our behaviour. Artists by smoking on the screen often became an effective link between big tobacco companies and the young with impressionable minds.

Smoking Screen

Cinema's power to move and mould men is awesome. Actors play facilitators and propagators of this power, and when India's Federal Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss, carried out a long campaign some months ago to ban smoking on the screen and even succeeded in doing so, he certainly had a point. Film heroes and heroines who essayed smokers often set hard-to-resist examples for especially their younger fans. The act was what mattered, not its consequences. Neither the money spent on cigarettes nor the terribly ruinous effect they had on health appeared on the radar of all those who idolised the men and women puffing away on the screen.