Some powerful Democratic senators are trying to tell Netflix how to better run its streaming service to avoid what they said was further endangering the health of America's youth.
In a letter to Netflix co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), urged them to "take steps to decrease young people’s exposure to tobacco, nicotine, and vaping imagery in video content."
They cited a report by the Truth Initiative, "While You Were Streaming: Nicotine on Demand", suggesting that tobacco use was "rampant" in videos and that its portrayal as glamourous or edgy was fueling an e-cigarette epidemic among the young.
The senators pointed out that the report found that Netflix was the "top offender" when it came to "the prevalence of this imagery in both new releases and popular shows among 15-to-24 year-olds."
The study of 2020 content cited "binge-worthy" Netflix shows like The Umbrella Academy and The Queen’s Gambit, the latter which it said "had included tobacco in every episode.
It has been almost three years since those same senators sent an April 19, 2020, letter to Netflix and others asking them about their role in promoting tobacco use and urging them to cut back those depictions. At the time, they said, Netflix had said it was going to reduce tobacco portrayals and that all content with a TV-14, PP-13 rating or below would be tobacco free unless it was for historical or factual accuracy, or as part of an anti-smoking message.
"Netflix’s apparent failure to stop the proliferation of this content poses serious health risks to young viewers," they told the executives in this week's letter, adding: "As young people continue to view Netflix’ programming in large numbers, your company has an obligation to ensure that its programming does not pose a health risk to these viewers."
The government has never been shy about asking, and sometimes incentivizing, media outlets to further its social policy goals, including by backing a program under the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) that paid programmers over a billion dollars work anti-drug messaging in their entertainment content.
Netflix had not returned a request for comment at press time.
