Bilbo Baggins, William H. Seward Contribute to Rising Rates of Onscreen Smoking in Movies

According to a new report by the Legacy of Health, movies are making smoking look cool again, especially to kids’ malleable little play-doh brains. The list of movies with high levels of smoking includes The Hobbit, Lincoln, Taken 2, Skyfall, and Men in Black 3.

Wait a second— “The Hobbit” makes kids want to smoke? I can see why you’d want to suck on a cancer stick after watching the bodacious Severine from Skyfall smoke a cigarette while slowly walking across a dimly lit casino floor, but wanting to be Bilbo Baggins puffing on a long pipe is like wanting to be a hairy wart for Halloween. Nobody wants that. That dude has toe bush.

Anyway, what’s more alarming than the thought of people subconsciously being into Bilbo smoking Longbottom Leaf is that the number of smoking incidents per film has gone up 54% from 2011 to 2012 in G, PG, and PG-13 movies, a.k.a. all the movies you can go see when you’re in 8th grade. Even in G and PG movies, total tobacco incidents per-movie have doubled between 2010 and 2012. With hotties like Anthony Bourdain saying stuff like, “I don’t want to encourage anyone to quit smoking. In my experience, it really does make you cool. Chicks love it,” you’d think we’d have a bunch of chain-smoking toddlers walking around.