Public Can Vote for Hackademy Awards on scenesmoking.org

Public Can Vote for Hackademy Awards on scenesmoking.org

Precursor to Oscars Pits Top Movies Against Each Other for Tobacco Content

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Feb. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time, the public can vote for movies to receive a Thumbs Up! or Thumbs Down! award to be presented at the Hackademy Awards ceremony in California by visiting www.scenesmoking.org and taking part in the "Scene Quick Poll."

Vying for the first People's Choice Thumbs Down! award are "Flight of the Phoenix," "Hellboy," "Ladder 49," "Saved!" and "Without a Paddle." Youth reviewers in California deemed each of these movies to be detrimental by encouraging teenagers to take up the habit of smoking by containing numerous glamorous images of tobacco use.

Up for the Thumbs Up! People's Choice award are "Day After Tomorrow," "Mean Girls," "Mr. 3000," "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" and "Torque." These movies are ones wherein you'd expect to see tobacco use, but they either had no or little smoking, or put the bad habit in its true light by showing the consequences of tobacco use.

Voting will continue through midnight on Sunday, Feb. 13, and will be announced Wednesday, Feb. 16, at the gala Hackademy Awards ceremony at Sacramento's Jean Runyon Little Theater in Memorial Auditorium. The youth of the Thumbs Up! Thumbs Down! program of the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails will be decked out in glamorous attire and given the red-carpet treatment by arriving in limousines and hosting the awards ceremony. Even a faux Melissa and Joan Rivers will be on the red carpet to interview the youth "stars."

The youth will also present their Thumbs Up! and Thumbs Down! awards for movie and actor/actress, along with other categories.

This is the 10th year for the Hackademy Awards, but the first in which they will be announced during a gala ceremony similar to the Oscars. The Hackademy Awards, a takeoff on the Academy Awards, focus on the effect that tobacco use in movies has on pre-teens and teenagers. Every day, about 1,070 youths start smoking as a result of scenes glamorizing tobacco in movies, according to the scenesmoking.org Web site, which draws on research from Dartmouth University, UCLA and others.

For more information, log onto www.scenesmoking.org, or call the American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails at (916) 446-5864.


Source: American Lung Association of Sacramento-Emigrant Trails

CONTACT: Kori Titus, +1-916-444-5864, for American Lung Association of
Sacramento-Emigrant Trails

Web site: http://www.scenesmoking.org/


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