On the 27th of June, Liverpool City Council is starting a consultation on smokefree movies.  It involves getting local people involved in the issue of smoking in youth rated movies and how it influences young people to smoke.

D-MYST would like for movies presenting smoking as glamorous to be given an ‘18’ rating certificate.  We want to know what other local people thought about the issue before we move forward with the campaign.

We will be holding an event in the City Centre on Monday 27th of June which you can come and see and get to know more about our campaign.

Ailene Whitehead – Age 18 – D-MYST member

After the success of DMYST’s International Smokefree Movies conference in Feb 2008, we felt we should keep in contact with everyone we had met and worked with internationally. When ‘Project Voice’ in Indiana contacted DMYST it was the perfect opportunity for us to update them on our progress over the last year.

The American youth group were interested in taking forward their group with a focus on smokefree movies so set up an international webcast involving members of DMYST, Reality Check who are based in New York, Professor Stanton Glantz and an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles.

We spoke about how we all dealt with different issues such as the public, press and film companies. Everyone in Indiana was really impressed with the work we have done so far in our SmokeFree Movies campaign and very supportive of our cause.

Since then we have decided to continue our webcasts and hold one every three months to continue our international partnership.

Ailene Whitehead – Age 18 – DMYST member