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Updated: May 29, 2026

Creating Dynamic Images of Short-lived Dopamine Fluctuations with lp-ntPET: Dopamine Movies of Cigarette Smoking
Published on: August 6, 2013
Movies with smoking make less money
Stanton A Glantz1, Jonathan R Polansky
1Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94143-1390, USA. glantz@medicine.ucsf.edu
Objective:
To determine the relationship between presence of smoking in films and total box office receipts.
Methods:
Regression analysis of box office receipts as a function of film rating, production budget, year of release and presence of smoking for 1232 films released in the USA between 2002 and 2010.
Results:
R-rated films made, on average, 87% (95% CI 83% to 90%) of what PG-13 films of similar smoking status made and smoking films made 87% (95% CI 79% to 96%) of what comparably rated smoke-free films made. Larger budget films made more money. There was no significant effect of release year or G/PG rating compared with PG-13-rated movies.
Conclusions:
Because PG-13 films without smoking (median $48.6 million) already make 41% more money at the box office than R-rated movies with smoking (median $34.4 million), implementing an R rating for smoking to remove it from youth-rated films will not conflict with the economic self-interest of producer-distributors.
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