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Posted on 06/15/2004 9:08:49 AM PDT by Mike Bates

Anti-smoking advocates would like movies that portray smoking to carry an R rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) doesn’t care for that idea much.

The organization’s resistance might have something to do with the fact that R rated movies as a rule aren’t as profitable as those with softer ratings. Or maybe it’s worried that if a concession is made to one bunch of self-appointed do-gooders, it’ll have to do it for others.

So what does one group, such as the anti-smoking activists, do when another group, such as the MPAA, won’t get with the program?

Run to Congress, of course. Try to get it to force the recalcitrant association into submission.

That happened last month before a Senate committee. The anti-smoking storm troopers must have loved hearing Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) declare: "If something isn't done by the industry, something will be done by Congress."

In some jurisdictions, that would be considered a threat. On Capitol Hill, unfortunately, it’s known as "addressing the issue."

I’m no fan of the MPAA’s rating system. It’s no coincidence that since its introduction audiences have been exposed to much more sex, nudity, violence and profanity than before. That was the way it was intended to work.

Many Americans were too naive to realize what the rating system would do. They thought it would protect them from the raw sewage that’s pandemic in films.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a couple leaving a movie say, "You know, honey, I liked that movie, but I just wish it had had a lot more cussin’."

There’s been a steady erosion of the standards, such as they are. Movies that 20 years ago would have been rated R are now rated PG-13, perhaps PG.

The only stakeholder that’s been protected by the rating system is the film industry. It can fend off attacks on the trash it cranks out with a "We warned you what was in it."

So the MPAA’s rating system is a sham. But that’s the business of the MPAA, a private organization.

The anti-smoking zealots testifying before the Senate committee argued that children seeing smoking depicted on the screen are more likely to smoke. One of them, a University of California professor, testified that giving an R rating for smoking in a movie "would probably prevent about 200,000 kids a year from starting to smoke."

Probably? About 200,000? That doesn’t sound terribly scientific. It appears to be a guess. With righteousness on your side, though, you can pretty much use whatever numbers you like and not be challenged or even questioned scrupulously.

The witness had an attention-grabbing way of emphasizing his point. He asked the committee: "When are we going to treat smoking as seriously as we treat the word ____?" and here he used THE word. You know, the word that, if used just once in a film, will get it at best a PG-13 rating.

Smoking isn’t healthy. Everyone knows that, and has for a very long time. In 1604, James I of England wrote: "Smoking is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless." And James didn’t even have the benefit of the surgeon general’s warning on every pack.

Anti-smoking forces have prevailed. They’ve won legislation banning it in many places. They’ve won exorbitant taxation of tobacco. They’ve won billions of dollars in settlements. They’ve won the public relations struggle.

Yet they can’t get over their fixation. For some, nothing less than the total obliteration of smoking and any vestige of it will satisfy them.

The MPAA shouldn’t voluntarily accede to their demands. Every group with an agenda will insist on similar treatment. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, which routinely issues reports warning of the dangers of anything that tastes good, would demand an R rating on movies having pizza, hamburgers or popcorn in them.

And members of Congress such as Senator Wyden need to get a grip. Good grief, those characters aren’t doing even a minimally satisfactory job of what they were elected to do. Why in the world are they dabbling in private organizations’ internal processes?

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