Dr Glantz said: “Liverpool is being very sensible, in my view. When you look at the BBFC and what warrants an 18 certificate – where material or treatment appears to the Board to risk harm to individuals or, through their behaviour, to society – then, given the huge body of science, it meets the standard for an 18 rating.
“All Liverpool is doing is saying, ‘Well, the BBFC is advisory to us, we have very high levels of smoking in Liverpool, and if they won’t enforce it, we will’.”
An academic at the University of California for more than 30 years, Dr Glantz rejected suggestions that the proposed ban was an issue of censorship.
He added: “They’re not being film censors. Censorship would be if they tried to pass a rule that said you can’t show smoking in films at all.
“All they’re doing is applying the proper categorisation and labelling. All they’re trying to do is take the existing ratings system and apply it in a way which is consistent with the law.”
The Liverpool PCT’s policy has won the support of the World Health Organisation, whose June report, Smoke-free Movies – From Evidence To Action’, states that “as a major export country for US films, these actions in the United Kingdom would have important implications for US film distributors and would likely create an incentive for more youth-marketed movies to be smoke-free.”
