John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It becomes a little bit like asking, "How long is a piece of string?". One of the things that strikes me about tobacco, for example, is that it does not ever seem to be necessary for the tobacco industry or film industry to credit tobacco with the funding of movies. I have always been of the impression that this is the case, however. It is particularly insidious in some movies. One cannot watch a scene without someone lighting up and the cigarette being presented in a very seductive kind of way. People can go to some movies where a cigarette can appear immediately. A movie is an hour and a half or two hours long. It would be an interesting exercise to count how many of the principal characters are smoking or how many times the principal actor smokes a cigarette. I do not know. There are clearly no rules or laws governing that. It happens in many movies. I have often wondered whether there is a connection between the number of times cigarettes appear in movies and the funding of those movies. That is something the Minister cannot address in this legislation but perhaps it can be looked at from a European perspective when the EU decides to come up with regulations on this. I am making the assumption that cigarette companies are funding the movie industry, given how prevalent the act of smoking is in movies. It gives the impression that the trend is going in the other direction.

The trend is going in the other direction. It has almost gone back to the sexy way in which the act of smoking was presented. It is very difficult to combat that. As a former smoker, that is one of those things I find. You would come out of a movie and you would have a craving and wonder where it has come from. It has come from the fact that this is not even subliminal; it is very extra-liminal. It is right there in your face and you cannot get away from it. Influencers have been mentioned but there are no more influential people than George Clooney, or other role models like him. We see people in movies constantly dragging on a cigarette.