New Delhi, April 23: More than half of Bollywood’s top-grossing films rated U or U/A and permitted for viewing by children and youth contained tobacco imagery over a three-year period, a study has shown.

A team of researchers from the Imperial College, London, and the Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi, has found that 24 out of 44 Bollywood films contained 179 “tobacco occurrences” that the researchers fear could drive youths towards tobacco use.

Their results appeared yesterday in the journal Heart Asia.

The study examined movies released between 2006 and 2008 and rated U, U/A and A. These included Om Shanti Om, Rang De Basanti, Shootout at Lokhandwala, Ghajini and Bhagam Bhag. It found that tobacco occurrences in Bollywood films were on average lower than those in Hollywood movies — 4.1 versus 6.7.

“But India’s large population and the popularity of cinema here lead to much higher tobacco impressions from Bollywood than Hollywood,” said Monika Arora, the study’s co-author at the Public Health Foundation of India. A tobacco impression is measured using the size of the audience for a film and the number of times it shows tobacco use.

The researchers used box-office data and the audience size of each of the films to calculate that Bollywood movies deliver approximately 14 billion tobacco impressions to Indian audiences in contrast to 920 million by Hollywood films in the UK.

“These results highlight the need for Indian authorities to protect young and vulnerable minds from being influenced by tobacco use,” Arora said.

Although the government last year brought in a set of rules that requires disclaimers and health warning messages whenever tobacco is shown on screens — whether films or television — public health experts believe there is also a need to rate films showing tobacco as A.

Tobacco surveys suggest that about 5,500 young people start consuming it daily in India, among whom many are likely to become long-term users. A survey in 2009 had shown that about 15 per cent of those below 15 use tobacco.

The researchers want the government to eliminate the depiction of tobacco imagery in Bollywood films rated U and U/A.

“Reconsidering the Indian film rating system would complement other tobacco control measures,” Gaurang Nazar, lead author of the study, said in a release.

The study found that seven among 13 U-rated films, 12 among 25 U/A-rated films, and five out of six A-rated films had tobacco imagery.

Tobacco control specialists say there is strong evidence to support concerns that depiction of tobacco use in films can cause teenagers and even younger children to light their first cigarette.

Two years ago, a research by Arora and her colleagues had shown that adolescents in India with high exposure to tobacco scenes in Bollywood films were twice as likely to take up the habit as adolescents who had low exposure to such movies.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had recommended in 2011 that new films with tobacco imagery should be labelled adult films — those that are supposed to carry an A rating.

Arora said the rules laid down under India’s Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act allowed the display of tobacco products in films with an A rating.

But the film industry has opposed the rules and because of the resistance, the norms have remained unimplemented.