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Probably helps that movies are still quite happy to feature smoking prominently, even to the point of giving an Oscar to the person who played a character called "Smoke" who's portrayal of any emotion was entirely communicated through... smoking or trying to smoke. I can't unsee how much on-screen time cigarettes get.

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I take my dad to the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto to watch old movies. Comparing movies of today to those movies, smoking is definitely not prominently featured in movies of today.

Well that was in an era where there were dramatically less barriers to advertising smoking in general and directly funding the film industry, but I love old films too. I mean relative to how much culture changed around smoking in the last 30 years. I'd wager that if there weren't as many period films released in recent years, there would be fewer cigarettes on screen, and if you're a regular movie goer you probably see more smoking on screen than in real life.

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