PARIS YouTube has become an arena for encouraging smoking among young people, hosting videos that link major cigarette brands with celebrities, music, sporting success and cartoons, according to medical research published on Thursday.

Lacking restrictions on tobacco ads that apply to TV, radio, newspapers and event sponsorship, the popular Internet site has become an open range for the Marlboro Man and other marques, it said.

Public health researchers at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand, analysed a sample of English-language video clips that contained references to five cigarette brands Marlboro; L&M; Benson and Hedges; Winston; and Mild Seven.

They selected 163 clips on the basis of “most popular” ranking and then analysed them, seeing whether smoking or the brand were seen positively or negatively, and if so, how.

There were scenes from films with popular actors and a cigarette whose brand was visible, extracts of tobacco-sponsored sporting events, and TV footage from the 1950s and 1960s, including The Flintstones, The Beverly Hillbillies and even the Beatles.—AFP