The lead characters in some of the decade's most successful films still smoke on-screen.
The number of times tobacco use appeared on-screen in PG-13 films jumped 120% between 2010 and 2018, according to a new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
It's a troubling trend, researchers said, because young people who see more smoking on-screen are more likely to smoke themselves.
The authors didn't offer an explanation for the jump in on-screen tobacco use but proposed ways to curb it.
Researchers suggested that the Motion Picture Association of America, the body responsible for rating films based on content, dole out R ratings to films with on-screen smoking unless the character smoking is a biographical figure or it portrays the negative effects of smoking.