* Smoking policies by three major studios cited
* R rating suggested for movies with tobacco use
By David Beasley
ATLANTA, July 14 (Reuters) - Far fewer top-grossing U.S. films aimed at young audiences feature smoking scenes, a possible factor in the decline in cigarette use among middle and high school students, health officials said on Thursday.
Tobacco use appeared on-screen 595 times in 2010 in top movies rated G, PG or PG-13, a 71.6 percent drop from 2005, according to a survey by a nonprofit group, Breathe California of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails.
The survey was published on Thursday in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report."
The drop in on-screen tobacco use largely can be attributed to policies by three major film studios, Time Warner <TWC.N> <TWX.N>, Disney <DIS.N> and Comcast <CMCSA.O>, which discourage smoking in their films, said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco who contributed to the CDC article.
Tobacco use in youth-rated movies by those three companies dropped 95.8 percent from 2005 to 2010, compared to 41.7 percent among companies without such policies, the CDC said.
"What this shows is that those policies have been working," Glantz told Reuters.
The CDC article concluded that the decreased presence of on-screen smoking might have contributed to less smoking among youths.
From 2000 to 2009, tobacco use among middle school students declined from 15.1 percent to 8.2 percent and among high school students from 34.5 percent to 23.9 percent, the CDC reported last August.
In 2007 the Motion Picture Association of America announced that scenes glamorizing smoking could affect a rating.
The World Health Organization and other groups have recommended an automatic R, or restricted, rating for movies featuring tobacco use, unless the film portrays an historical figure who smoked or depicts the harm of smoking, according to the CDC.
An R rating means children under age 17 require an accompanying parent or adult guardian.
"Adoption of this policy could further reduce tobacco incidents in youth-rated movies," the CDC report said. (Editing by Xavier Briand)
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