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Big Health Care Providers, Religious and Social Investors Ask Disney to Go Smoke Free in Youth-Rated Movies

Studies linking smoking and movies have shareholders worried

SAN FRANCISCO -- Recent scientific evidence shows that exposure to on-screen smoking results in more adolescents starting to smoke. This data has prompted a new shareholder alliance to ask the parent companies of the Big Four publicly-traded Hollywood studios to cut out smoking in movies rated as youth-friendly.

Today the group filed a shareholder resolution with The Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS), asking it to report to shareholders about the impact on adolescent health arising from teen exposure to smoking in movies and how it plans to minimize such impact in the future.

The group filing the resolution includes five major health care providers who operate more than 100 hospitals nationwide with combined annual revenues exceeding $17 billion, as well as socially responsible shareholders, and Catholic and Protestant institutional investors that cumulatively own at least $4 million of Disney stock. Disney’s film properties include Walt Disney Pictures, Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films.

“We have a policy to not invest in tobacco companies,” said Mary Ann Gaido, Vice President of Advocacy and Government Relations for St. Joseph Health System, Orange, Calif., an integrated health care system that operates scores of hospitals in California and the Southwest. “These movie companies may not be identified as tobacco companies, but when they sell a product, such as movies with smoking, that influences children to smoke, they become complicit in this health-hazard.”

Other health care systems filing the resolutions are Bon Secours Health System (Charleston, SC); Catholic Healthcare West (San Francisco), Christus Health (Houston) and Trinity Health (Novi, MI). Similar filings are planned in the coming months by the investor group at General Electric (NYSE - GE), which owns Universal Studios, Time Warner (NYSE-TWX) owner of Warner Bros. Pictures, and Viacom (NYSE-VIA) owner of Paramount.

The new shareholder group, Smoking and Movies Shareholder Outreach Network (SAMSON), is a joint project of the Tobacco Program of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility based in New York City, and As You Sow, a San Francisco-based foundation.

“Shareholders have played a key role in getting tobacco companies to take responsibility for the devastating health impacts caused by smoking,” said Rev. Michael Crosby, Coordinator of the Tobacco Program at the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and Co-Director of SAMSON. “It has become clear we now have another source of smoking that must be stopped. Smoking in movies is a gateway for kids to start.”

Four recent studies have provided the impetus for shareholders to act. The first is a Dartmouth Medical School study which found that teens who viewed movies with smoking are three times more likely to start smoking. A second study, in the journal Pediatrics, found that 14% of the teens free to watch tobacco-intensive R-rated movies took up smoking, compared to 3% of teens whose parents barred them from viewing R-rated fare. A third study, from the University of California - San Francisco, demonstrated that girls whose favorite stars smoke are more likely to begin smoking. The fourth study, by the Harvard School of Public Health, reports a decade of “ratings creep,” finding that content once concentrated in R-rated films, including smoking, is increasingly found in films rated PG and PG-13.

“We are concerned that mounting evidence points to entertainment companies being partially responsible for initiation of teen smoking,” said Conrad MacKerron, Director of the Corporate Social Responsibility Program at As You Sow and Co-Director of SAMSON. “Whether intentional or not, these companies are now a factor in how teens start to smoke. A prudent investor reviewing this new data linking exposure to movies in which characters smoke to initiation of teen smoking would conclude that the film studios need to take additional steps to protect youth from smoking and to protect themselves from potential liability.”

Other filers of the Disney resolution are As You Sow, Sisters of St. Dominic of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, Catholic Equity Fund, Congregation of St. Agnes, Fond du Lac, WI; Ursuline Sisters of the Eastern Province, Bronx, NY; Racine Dominican Sisters, Racine, WI; Philadelphia Franciscan Sisters, Aston, PA; Brethren Benefit Trust, Elgin, IL; and Springfield Dominican Sisters, Springfield, IL.

“Walt Disney Co., which has long marketed films directly to children, has a unique responsibility to ensure that it is not helping to hook kids on smoking,” said Sister Regina McKillip of the Sinsinawa Dominicans. She noted that many of the young people who begin to smoke will become addicted. “From the beginning our sisters have always been concerned about young people; this is just another dimension of our historical commitment to help in their education.”

Echoing this sentiment, Will Thomas, representing the Church of the Brethren, wrote to the Disney company this summer. He asked why the Brethren should not exclude Disney under their tobacco screen since the company seems to be leading young people to smoke.

The text of the resolution and background information, filer information, and links to the studies cited above are available at www.proxyinformation.com/samson. For additional information, you may also contact these individual filers: Regina McKillip, OP, Sinsinawa Dominicans at 708-366-6244; and Will Thomas, Church of the Brethren at 847-622-3385.

Background on the larger issue can be found at www.smokefreemovies.com.