MTV Video Music Awards criticised for glorifying weed

 An organisation that ran anti-cigarette
smoking ads during the Video Music Awards has
complained to MTV's parent company about the
program's multiple references to marijuana and said
it sent the wrong message to young viewers.
Show host Miley Cyrus was responsible for most of
them. She even came backstage with a lit joint after
the show and passed it around to photographers.
"It is entirely understandable for viewers to be
confused, after hearing so much about marijuana
during the VMA broadcast, to see a powerful
advertisement about the dangers of tobacco," said
Eric Asche, chief marketing officer of the Truth
Initiative, which sponsored two anti-cigarette ads.
Asche said his group was "extremely disappointed"
and expressed that feeling to Viacom.
An MTV spokesperson said the network declined to
comment.
The VMAs are MTV's biggest event of the year and the
show was seen Sunday by nearly 10 million people
across several of Viacom's networks. Cyrus sang a
song, "Dooo It!" that included the lyrics, "loving what
you sing, and loving smoking weed." She ate
supposed pot brownies with Snoop Dogg in one skit,
and lit up with a group of friends in another. She held
up a selfie stick and encouraged the group of people
behind her, "Everyone say marijuana!"
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Pot is popular among MTV's target audience. College
students are smoking marijuana at a higher rate than
at any time in the last 35 years, surpassing cigarette
smoking, according to a University of Michigan study
released this week. A Pew Research Center poll from
this spring found that 53% of American support
legalising pot, a percentage that rises to 68% among
people born between 1981 and 1997.
The message sent by celebrities about marijuana on
the VMAs is every bit as persuasive as the show's
commercials, said Tim Winter, president of the
Parents Television Council.
"What they're basically doing is telling everyone,
especially kids but all viewers, that marijuana use is
nothing to eschew," Winter said.
Plenty of successful people smoke pot, and have the
financial cushion to handle it if things go wrong, said
Kevin Sabet, head of the anti-drug group Smart
Approaches to Marijuana. Not everyone in MTV's
audience has the same luxury.
"It's really a bad message to young people that
marijuana is harmless," Sabet said, "especially at a
time when the marijuana kids are using is 5 to 10
times as strong as the marijuana their parents used."
Asche's Truth Initiative has been operating since
2000 to target young people about the dangers in
cigarette smoking. Noticing that tobacco products like
hookah and flavored cigars are on the rise, it
produced a special commercial targeting those areas.
Backstage as she offered a hit to photographers, the
22-year-old Cyrus noted that she'd been smoking for
a while.
"Because you're all my friends, and my song is kinda,
sorta about the love of marijuana and the love of
humankind, I brought a little joint if anyone would
like any," she said. "Anyone?"
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