this is kinda weird, i haven't formed an opinion yet....


http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/hotgossip?GT1=7701


Melanie Smoked Out


August 7, 2006
Melanie Griffith is taking heat for blowing smoke with her teenage offspring. Last week outside a Beverly Hills boutique, paparazzi snapped the actress, 48, cigarette dangling from her lips, lighting a nicotine stick for a young woman identified as her 16-year-old daughter, Dakota (dad is Don Johnson).

Given that you can't toss a spent butt these days without hitting an antismoking warning, it's not surprising that Melanie's not-so-maternal gesture has earned her a stern rebuke from the American Lung Association.

"I feel sorry for Ms. Griffith's inability to rid herself of this potentially fatal addiction but find it most reprehensible that she would facilitate her daughter's addiction," Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the ALA, told MSN Entertainment when we contacted the organization for comment. "I am surprised by the bland public response. How would the public react to a photo of Ms. Griffith sharing a line of coke with her daughter? Lighting her cigarette is equivalent from a moral and health impact point of view."

According to Dr. Edelman, "Cigarette smoking is the major cause of preventable death in the US, killing about 450,000 Americans each year," and adds, "Virtually all people who die due to this addiction have been hooked in their teens or pre-teens."

Griffith's publicist did not respond to our request for comment on the smoking snaps.

This isn't the first time Melanie has been called out for her tobacco jones. Back in 1996, she faced sharp criticism after she was photographed puffing away while pregnant with daughter Stella (dad is husband Antonio Banderas).

And in July 2005, the New York Post claimed wardrobe staffers at a photo shoot to plug Griffith's WB sitcom "Twins" were fuming over her ever-present cigarette, an incident that purportedly prompted producers to ask her to refrain from smoking on the set.

Just how much are cigarettes a part of Melanie's life? The actress, a rehab grad who has repeatedly tried to nix her nicotine habit, once showed In Style a picture of Banderas exhaling smoke while she breathed it in.

"Like the smoke in the picture," the actor wrote on the back of the photo, "I would like to give you my soul."

Griffith, meanwhile, raised eyebrows in 2000 when she told the New York Daily News, "I have said to my children, 'If anyone comes up to you with pot or any drugs, please tell me first. If you feel like you have to do it, I would rather you do it with me than with somebody else.'" Still, she added, "I would rather they not even try it."

Two years later, she admitted her plan didn't work with son Alexander (dad is Steven Bauer).

"I said that if my son wanted to smoke pot, I would smoke it with him. I did -- and it backfired," she was quoted as telling More magazine. "My thinking was that it would be better for him to do it at home than to go out in the street and get something that would kill him. I thought it was a good idea, but ultimately, it wasn't."

Nobody has ever accused Melanie Griffith of being smart.

i put this story in my "who gives a fuck?" column.

smoking is bad, encouraging your kids to smoke is bad too, but there are far worse things that happen to kids of famous people that this just does not register on my outrage scale.

this part is especially stupid:



comparing nicotine to cocaine is just plain sensationalism. and i would wager that griffith's heavy smoking is a direct result of her rehab days...a lot of people use nicotine as a replacement for an alcohol or cocaine habit.

morally comparing nicotine I would agree with you, but health wise smoking cigs is way more dangerous than coke. How many people die from smoking or lung cancer vs. coke related deaths? I'm guessing alot more people die from nicotine than coke.

i don't give a shit about this chick either, i just thought the topic was interesting. Do you provide smokes for your underage kids?

And how many more people smoke tobacco than do coke? You've gotta work with a per capita thing here.

i don't have kids and i don't smoke, and i would hope that any future offspring of mine would be as revolted by cigarette smoke as i am. but i would think that a parent who chain smokes would have a hard time convincing an offspring that "smoking is bad".

"do as i say and not as i do" only goes so far, you know?

It's really irresponsible to let your underage kids smoke, much less smoke with them.

I would think it would be illegal, too.

yeah....

mom smoked before during and after the pregnancy with me and my siblings, but always tried to convince me not to smoke, and i don't, but not because she said so, its just repulsive all together.

exactly. what would be interesting is if a study could be done to compare the percentage of "addicts" of each drug that die from it (for smoking: lung cancer, emphesema(sp???), etc.; for coke: overdoses).

my uneducated guess is that a higher percentage of coke addicts die, but i won't delve into possible socio-economic issues related to that (lack of available treatment, that it is illegal, the habit has made them broke, etc., etc.).

about the actual article, i don't care. my parents (models of middle-class parenting) knew that my sister smoked before she was 18, but wouldn't buy her smokes or let her smoke in the house (once they found out about it). my dad is a former smoker, so it especially pains him that my sister has picked up the habit.

Incredibly shitty parenting.

I really enjoyed the (who's the baby daddy) side bars.

cigarettes after sex are great

Girls who smoke with their mothers at 16 get pregnant at 17.

girls who drink with their father at 16 get pregnant at 17