Cannabis and nicotine in German music videos

Abstract

Smoking of tobacco and cannabis is widespread in Germany. Preventing children and adolescents from starting to use these products is an important goal of prevention. The aim of the present study was to examine how often depiction or mention of cannabis and nicotine use occurs in German-language music videos, which can be seen as advertising for smoking. The sample, which comprised the population of all German-language music videos listed in the YouTube Top 100 Charts in 2023, included 600 music videos. Using a coding scheme, the music videos were categorised as 'smoke-free' or 'not smoke-free' and the depiction or mention of consumption was counted. Of the videos examined, 54.7% (n=328) contained at least one depiction or mention of cannabis or tobacco use; 31.7% of the videos (n=190) were exclusively about tobacco use, 12.5% of the videos (n=75) were exclusively about cannabis use, and 10.5% (n=63) were about both. While tobacco or cannabis use was shown or mentioned in 67.0% of the videos from the 'German rap' genre, the average for the other genres was 20.6% (OR=7.83; p<0.001). When considering cannabis use alone, the difference between the genres was even more pronounced. The proportion of videos in which cannabis was shown or mentioned was 29.7% in the 'German rap' genre and 4.4% in the other genres (OR=9.27; p<0.001). The 328 videos in which tobacco or cannabis use was shown received 3.2 billion clicks (64.5% of clicks). This means that these 328 videos generated a total of 9.7 trillion impressions. Of these, 5.8 trillion impressions were about nicotine use and 3.9 trillion about cannabis use. Music videos expose children and adolescents to a wide range of scenes of nicotine and cannabis use, which remains largely unregulated.