Attorney General Kelly Ayotte announced today that she, along with 40 other Attorneys General, has called upon Hollywood’s major motion picture studios to insert anti-smoking public service announcements in all DVDs, videos and other home viewing formats of movies in which smoking is depicted. The Attorneys General sent each studio three "classic" truth® anti-smoking campaign messages that were created by the American Legacy Foundation and that are available at no cost for the studios’ unlimited use.

"I hope we’ve made an offer that the studios will be happy to accept," said Attorney General Ayotte. "Public service announcements already appear on DVDs for many worthwhile causes and organizations, and they are often linked to themes prevalent in the movies they precede. While we would like to see a reduction of smoking depictions in movies seen by youth under 18, we are hoping that the studios will take advantage of using these anti-smoking messages."

The letter proposing the PSAs is the latest in a series of actions by the Attorneys General to gain the cooperation of the movie industry in reducing youth smoking initiation by reducing depictions of smoking and tobacco brand appearances in movies and by airing effective anti-smoking PSAs.

The Attorneys General’s letter follows a Dartmouth Medical School study finding that a reduction of the prevalence of cigarette smoking depictions in movies could drastically reduce the number of youth who start smoking.

Movie studios never responded to a November 2005 request by 32 Attorneys General to the studios to help prevent youth smoking by inserting anti-smoking messages on movies that depict smoking. Instead, Motion Picture Association of America President Dan Glickman wrote to the Attorneys General that only the individual companies could decide whether to run PSAs on DVDs or videos and that the industry would consider PSAs as one possible idea in an overall anti-smoking campaign effort. To date, the Attorneys General have received no further indication from the studios or the MPAA of progress on an anti-smoking PSA effort.

Today's letter and the earlier request were sent to the CEOs of Paramount Pictures, The Walt Disney Company, Miramax Films, DreamWorks SKG, Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM Pictures, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers Studios, Fox Filmed Entertainment, and New Line Cinema. Today's letter was also sent to the CEOs of three independent studios: Lionsgate, MTV Network and The Weinstein Company.