SEQUIM — Clint Jones is huffin’ that people are puffin’ in movies old and new.
You know, the ones where the screen lights up, and so does an actor.
Jones is passing a petition demanding that the federal government require warnings — “Cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide” and similar messages ¬– be flashed as subtitles on the screen whenever a character smokes.
Jones was galvanized a couple of years ago by a scene from Jurassic Park in which the camera lingered in a close-up shot of a smoldering cigarette.
“It made me feel very uncomfortable,” he said.
“Kids are seeing it, getting the message that smoking is OK.”
Tobacco companies, he said, “are getting free advertising with these scenes all the time.”
Jones laid his idea for subtitle warnings aside “because I didn’t know what to do with it,” he said.
Earlier this month, though, he revived it and pitched it to a book discussion group to which he belongs.
List of signatures growing
None of the book group members turned down his petition.
“Now I have close to 100,” he said earlier this week.
“The whole idea is that we have to warn people that cigarette smoking is dangerous, especially for children.”
Jones called a television station and asked how such subtitles could be inserted into movies on TV.
“They said they don’t do it themselves,” he told Peninsula Daily News.
“This would have to be a federal law. It has to go through the Congress or the United States or the Department of Health and Human Services.”
Jones is no stranger to such causes.
An inveterate writer of letters to the PDN, he started a movement to revise the Pledge of Allegiance about a year ago that attracted 30 to 40 people who discovered they could do little to change the recitation.
That, though, was more successful than his campaign to remove the “e” from Sequim to put an end to its mispronunciation.
He may have hit pay dirt with the smoking/subtitle issue that he’s submitted to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Freeland.
“This is not something that’s earth shaking, but I think it’s important,” he said.
“I don’t think the tobacco companies should get a free ride on something like this.”
Jones, 81, has sung opera, performed with the vocal chorus at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, invented the Dandy Digger weeding tool, and sold items ranging from cameras to computer courses.
He has never smoked, nor have members of his family.
The closest he came to tobacco fumes was as a member of a Parents Without Partners chapter where members smoked.
After attending a meeting, he’d have to air his clothes for several days, he said.
“I have a very healthy body,” said Jones, who added that he runs daily and often bicycles.
To support Jones’s smoking/subtitle campaign, people should send their names and telephone numbers to him at clintjones@olypen.com or phone him at 360-681-0101.
‘It’s the government’s duty’
Smoking on screen usually has little to do with a movie’s story, he said, so subtitling the scenes shouldn’t eviscerate their dramatic integrity.
What it should do, Jones said, is remove glamor from tobacco use.
“That’s what addiction is all about,” he said.
“It starts out with a social action. If you see your friends do it, you’ll do it too.
“We need to recognize that scenes showing tobacco usage is not good for society, particularly children who have no control over what’s being shown.
“We adults do have control over what’s being shown.
“That’s our obligation to our children. And it’s the government’s duty.”
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Reporter Jim Casey can be reached at 360-417-3538 or at jim.casey@ peninsuladailynews.com.
