To the Editor: Eslick and Eslick believe that the television program The Simpsons causes children to smoke.1 What they gloss over is that in this show, only “losers” smoke.

The characters Patty and Selma are old, ugly, mean-tempered, sexually frustrated sisters working in deadening jobs at the motor vehicle licensing office. They don’t just smoke, they chain-smoke — a well established television trope for sleaze and disease — and then they cough, hack, and wheeze. Krusty the Clown, if the name doesn’t tell you already, is a beaten-up, ageing, balding guy. He’s nasty, neurotic, and estranged from his father for abandoning his orthodox Jewish roots for the sinful life of television. Mrs Krabappel, the schoolteacher, is old, divorced, ugly, hates her job, hates her life, and hates children.

It may be that children watch The Simpsons. I don’t know, and Eslick and Eslick cite no data that show they do. The questions, though, are: Do children understand what a loser is? Do they emulate losers, or shun them?

Eslick and Eslick cite studies showing that any portrayal of smoking causes children to smoke.1 If this is so, why bother to differentiate between “neutral”, “positive” and “negative” portrayals of smoking? And what, precisely, do these labels mean? If, as they say, the “most notable characters” who smoke are these four loser characters, it is strange that they have coded most smoking instances as neutral rather than negative.

Even if the authors have a valid labelling system, and even if neutral portrayals cause children to smoke, the question then becomes: is this effect greater than any countervailing effects, such as, perhaps, that of discouraging adults (and adults who are parents) from smoking, or that of creating a broad cultural association between smoking, social failure, and sickness?

The logic of the argument put by Eslick and Eslick is that smoking should not be depicted at all in television programs that children watch. Given that children see people smoking in real life, and presumably look around them for some guidance as to whether they should do it too, it seems to me that it is actually commendable to tell them that only losers smoke. Strong evidence and argument that this approach does more harm than good would be very valuable.

To the Editor: The article by Eslick and Eslick1 caught my attention, as the sophisticated parodying of the tobacco industry on The Simpsons has been a much discussed topic among my tobacco-control colleagues.

In the introduction to the article, the authors ask if the smoking and tobacco industry portrayals in this program are “just satire, or does the repetitive nature of characters smoking on The Simpsons have an influence on young children watching?” The study design employed cannot answer this question. I was surprised then that the authors concluded that the portrayals of smoking on The Simpsons negatively influence young children. The study results indicate that positive portrayals of smoking on the show are, in fact, extremely rare. It could equally be the case that the more numerous negative portrayals of smoking on this popular and subversive comedy reach young viewers in a way no government-sanctioned health promotion campaign can.

Health education messages presented through social satire may not be politically correct, but this does not mean they are ineffective in communicating antismoking sentiments.2 The two most prominent smokers in The Simpsons, Patty and Selma Bouvier, are not characters that any teenager would aspire to be like — disgruntled, middle-aged sisters who live together, work in depressing jobs at the local Department of Motor Vehicles, Selma constantly bemoaning her lack of a husband and fantasising about 1980s heart-throb MacGyver, and Patty best known for her utter joylessness and cynicism. Surely these grim stereotypes would cause most young people to turn away from smoking, and not towards it?

Tobacco-control policies themselves were recently lampooned in The Simpsons, with the Simpson family opening a pub in Ireland that illegally allowed patrons to smoke. Much mayhem ensues, and the Simpsons are eventually deported back to the United States for breaking the Irish antismoking laws.3 I am delighted that tobacco control has such universal momentum that it can be parodied on a pop-culture phenomenon like The Simpsons.