MEDIA VALUES ABOUT TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL

MEDIA VALUES ABOUT TOBACCO AND ALCOHOL

Some very deeply held values center around substance use and abuse. Perhaps the greatest change in this area since the early days of TV is in the attitudes and behavior about smoking. Like many early TV characters, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo smoked cigarettes regularly in the old I Love Lucy show of the 1950s, sometimes at the specific request of the tobacco company sponsor. With very few exceptions, however, regular characters on TV series have not smoked since the 1960s, clearly out of a health concern over a possible negative effect on youth seeing admired TV characters smoking. Although this certainly reflects the great decline in the percentage of adult smokers since 1960, it may have also contributed to that decline. Even among teens, smoking is much less cool than it used to be, and television may be part of the reason for that. Curiously, however, the same trend is not apparent in movies, where characters smoke far more frequently; this is probably due in part to product-placement agreements with tobacco companies to feature those products (see chapter 4). Recent indications of a possible rise in teen smoking have focused more attention on such media models.

In regard to alcohol, the most widely abused drug, the United States has seen decreasing acceptance of alcohol abuse since the mid-1980s and 1990s. Although social drinking remains at high, although at modestly reduced levels, and alcoholism as a disease and a social problem is still rampant, attitudes about excessive drinking are much less tolerant in the United States than previously. The drunk is not so much an object of humor as of pity or disgust. Portrayals of drinking on TV have had to, at least implicitly, take note of this. Whether TV has been a factor in producing this societal change in values or whether it is merely reflecting what has been caused by other social forces is unclear at this point. One area of recent concern is binge drinking among college students. This is perhaps encouraged by, for example, university newspaper stories about people celebrating their 21st birthdays by visiting several bars until totally drunk, or by a telephone or credit card company ad showing a fellow passed out on the bathroom floor with “Happy 21st” written below. Is this just reporting reality or is it legitimizing dangerous antisocial behavior?

Finally, TV shows today are careful not to show illicit drug use by respected characters. Adults or teens may occasionally be shown using drugs, but it is nearly always presented as wrong. This mindset even carries over into news; when conservative U.S. Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg admitted in 1987 to past marijuana use the media

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treated this as a very serious issue, ultimately culminating in the withdrawal of the nomination, even though polls showed that most Americans thought past marijuana use should not disqualify one from the Supreme Court. As the baby boom generation, who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, began to move into leadership positions, however, reactions started changing. In 1992, Democratic Presidential nominee Bill Clinton admitted to trying marijuana once as a graduate student in 1969. This was greatly covered in the media (especially a rather curious

statement that he “didn’t inhale”). 1 However, the public did not hold this transgression against Clinton; he won the election.

1 When questioned later about the apparently self-serving “I didn’t inhale” comment, Clinton explained that, having never smoked tobacco, he did not know

how to inhale. This explanation, however, received very little coverage in the copious news coverage of this issue.