The Motion Picture Association of America has announced that movies will now be evaluated, in terms of protecting a younger audience from improper content, on a newly added criterion: portrayals of smoking.

Sexual and violent scenes and language have long been criteria for rating a film’s suitability for the impressionable minds of younger moviegoers. Smoking will now be amongst these defining criteria.

As a result, films including scenes that present smoking as something positive, acceptable, will face rating that is more restrictive. While up until now teenage smoking was under scrutiny, the new policy directs attention at all tobacco use in movies.

The MPAA said Thursday that the ratings board would look at the context in which the smoking occurs in the film and whether smoking is pervasive and/or glamorized. However, films featuring tobacco use will not be automatically rated R, as anti-smoking groups have proposed, the MPAA said.

MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman stated that the MPAA film ratings system is an “an educational tool” that parents can use to make informed decisions when it comes to movies they allow their children to see. He added that “smoking is increasingly an unacceptable Behaviour in our society”

From now on, when a film’s rating will depend on the depiction of smoking it includes, there will be additional warnings such as “glamorized smoking” or “pervasive smoking.”

Both the Directors Guild of America and THE Screen Actors Guild expressed their support for the MPAA’s initiative.