Surgeon General’s Warning: This Film May Be Hazardous to Your Health

The California Attorney General’s office, fresh from its Getty follies, has just announced that “the Weinstein Company [run by ex-Miramaxers Bob and Harvey Weinstein] will be the first motion picture firm to embed anti-smoking public service announcements (PSAs) in DVD versions of movies that depict smoking.”
I hate smoking as much as the next concerned parent, but if you’re going to start tacking on wholesome anti-vice messages at the end of raunchy flicks, where does it all end? Having just seen (and admired) the latest Martin Scorsese meditation on depravity, “The Departed,” I can envision as many PSAs “embedded” in that DVD as there were product advertisements inserted before the start of the movie: alcohol, drugs, handguns, unprotected sex—this movie has it all, including a prosthetic penis. But no nicotine, as far as I can recall.
I think the proper practitioners of parenting are parents—not movie moguls. Let’s just say that “no animals were harmed,” and leave it at that.