The more movie scenes of smoking they watch, the more likely Mexican-American youths are to experiment with smoking, researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Dartmouth College report in the December issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

The three-year prospective study of 1,286 Mexican-American adolescents showed the percentage of new experimenters increased from about 5 percent among those with little or no exposure to nearly 30 percent for those who saw up to 600 smoking scenes. The effect was dose-dependent, with experimentation linearly correlated with movie exposure.

"We suspect the greater impact among Mexican-born might occur because movie-viewing is part of the socialization process for those not born here,” said lead author Anna Wilkinson, Ph.D., assistant professor in M. D. Anderson’s Department of Epidemiology in the Division of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences.

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