Chain-smoking characters in BBC1’s The Serpent are promoting the habit, campaigners claim. The drama, based on a true story, tells of French serial killer Charles Sobhraj and girlfriend Marie-Andree Leclerc, and the Dutch diplomat who investigates the murders of several Western tourists in 1970s Bangkok.
All three characters are regularly seen chain smoking in the eight-part series. Deborah Arnott of anti-smoking charity ASH said: “There’s a proven causal link between watching people smoke on screen and taking up smoking yourself.
Whether the smokers are heroes or villains, cool or not, doesn’t make any difference. “Exposure to images of people smoking makes it harder for smokers to quit, and more likely that ex-smokers will start smoking
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