A recent controversy: several watchdog groups have criticized James Cameron’s film “Avatar” because the character Dr. Grace Augustine, played by Sigorney Weaver, chain smokes on screen. Critics of the film say the Augustine’s prolific tobacco use sends a “pro smoking” message to teens and makes smoking look “cool and glamorous.”

Forget about the gratuitous sex and violence portrayed in a positive light in numerous movies and cable television shows. Society must protect America’s youth from cigarettes, because smoking is worse for teenagers than say, unprotected sex and dating violence.

People forget that until scientists discovered the harmful effects of smoking, a lot of people smoked both on and off screen. It was culturally acceptable to smoke therefore people smoked in movies and on television.  Art imitated life, not the other way around.

Take a look at the International Movie Database’s Top 250 Movies. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Aside from the animated family friendly movies, how many have some form of smoking in them? Just about all of them have at least one character who smokes.

When did America become so uptight about smoking? It wasn’t when we found out it was harmful; if that was the case, every movie made before 1980 would be criticized and scorned for their so-called “pro-smoking agendas.”

Many critically praised movies show the main characters puffing on a cigarette or a pipe. Another recent movie, Sherlock Holmes, shows the main character smoking a pipe on screen. Did critics and anti-smoking groups start saying it had a pro-smoking agenda? Nope, not a word against dear Holmes. Then again, smoking was common in that time period, so it’s more acceptable for Holmes to smoke than Dr. Grace Augustine, because she lives in the future and therefore should know about the dangers of tobacco use. Right.

Call me when people start complaining about legitimate problems, like the amount of shows overflowing with sex and violence accessible with the simple click of a remote.