Kid Flicks Join the Fight

Kids won't just be seeing an entertaining movie when they pop in "The Dark Knight" DVD in a few months. They'll also be seeing an ad explaining the dangers of smoking at a young age.

California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger has collaborated with the California Health and Human Services Agency, the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) and Hollywood studios to establish a campaign against kid and teen smoking. California’s anti-smoking advertisements will run before the feature showing of all new movies on DVD that are rated G, PG and PG-13 that have smoking scenes in them. Nearly every major Hollywood studio has agreed to the campaign, and it's slated to run through 2009.

Currently, four different quitting smoking ads are slated for the DVDs, all of which are aimed toward children. In “Icons,” pop culture icons that have traditionally been associated with smoking, such as cowboys and flappers, will be set along side clips of real smokers, such as people dying of lung cancer. Another commercial features people with bubble wands instead of cigarettes and asks audiences to imagine a world without smoking.

How effective do you think this new campaign will be, and do you think this is only aimed at kids? Shouldn’t R-rated films that have smoking scenes also contain anti-smoking commercials? [MarketWatch]