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

We organised an event with Juice FM to raise awareness of smoking in movies and gave it an ‘Oscar’ theme to tie in with the movie industry.

At the Oscars event there were a variety of acts and famous people including dancers, singers, rappers and more all that had come out to support our campaign and help get smoking out of movies.

Over 250 Liverpool young people turned up and it was hosted by Adam and Leanne from the breakfast show on Juice FM.

It was set out like a real Oscar event with Brad and Angelina lookalikes, ghostbusters and storm troopers. We had paparazzi and a red carpet entrance. There was a huge stage with balloons and cardboard stand ups of Oscar statues. There was also a dance troop performing who were very good.

Overall the Oscars were a success and over 100 people wanted to be a part of DMYST, so it must have been good!

Check out the pics in the photo gallery

Greg Brookman – Age 12 – DMYST member

Thank you to all of you that attended our training seminar in February. We hope those of you that attended found it useful. We had good feedback from the event and thank you for your comments. Please see below:

‘it helped me focus on the agenda and inspired me’

‘very motivating - will be using things learned to develop own group’

‘found it very useful & gained a lot of extra knowledge to be delivered to the young people I work with’

‘..it enlightened me to the lies and manipulations of the tobacco companies’

Take a look at some of our pictures in our photo gallery

Danielle Maloney - DMYST Programme Support Officer

For the training event we invited people from all around the UK to come to Liverpool and we gave them information on how to set up an anti-tobacco group like DMYST. We also showed them the different skills required to be able to get the message across in a productive and positive way.

DMYST members also conducted peer-peer training with the young people that attended and worked on issues together such as the lies and manipulations of the tobacco industry, tobacco and poverty and facts and figures of smoking.

Overall we enjoyed the event and liked sharing our experiences with other young people from across the UK. We think that the more young people campaigning to stomp out smoking across the UK the better!

Danny Sharifian - Age 15 - DMYST member

DMYST have been writing to the BBFC for over two years. We wrote to them and told them about our Smokefree Movies campaign and requested a meeting with them a number of times to which we got quite an unpleasant response!

They eventually agreed to meet with us in February this year. They said that three members would be allowed to go to London to meet with them so myself, Michael and Danny attended along with Eilidh our co-ordinator and members of SmokeFree Liverpool.

We met with Pete Johnson, the Chief Policy Manager of the BBFC. He told us about how exactly they classify films. He said they concentrate on issues such as violence and drugs to decide on the age range for films and smoking was not one of their main focuses. We told them that we thought they should focus more on smoking as young people take it up when they watch their favourite stars smoking – this they didn’t agree with and said that if the public wanted it out of youth rated films then they would consider it but don’t think that the public do want it out.

We have evidence to support that the public do want smoking out of films and will continue to campaign to prove to the BBFC that the public do want it out of youth rated films!

Vicky Brookman – Age 14 – DMYST member