Good question about ratings and cigarette smoking. Some quick googling pulled up this well-researched article [1] last updated a year ago that does indicate tha

Good question about ratings and cigarette smoking. Some quick googling pulled up this well-researched article [1] last updated a year ago that does indicate that the MPAA is more inclined to give an R rating to movies that show smoking, although they do consider some of the context. If it's a historical piece that had real-world smokers, they're more inclined to not let the smoking factor into the ratings because then it gets in the way of the intent of the writer/director to make the movie realistic. They are more inclined to allow smoking if it's used to make smoking look bad (the smoker is slovenly, coughs a lot, etc) or if the smoker has smoking-related consequences (lung cancer, being made fun of, etc). Television is a bit more nuanced. The TV ratings (TV-MA, TV-PG, etc) are self-assigned by the network showing the show according to their own guidelines, or a collection of amorphous industry "best practices". There is also a difference between Broadcast Network television and cable television. Cable television doesn't seem to feel a restriction on showing smoking characters, but a show on Network television that wants to have a character smoke has to work really hard to get approval. Here is an example from the NBC series "The Mick" [2] where they state: "When the Chernin brothers first mentioned to the writing staff that they wanted to do an episode about Mickey (Kaitlin Olson) and Sabrina (Sofia Black-D’Elia) smoking, we knew it would be a challenge. On cable, the characters can smoke themselves into oblivion, but on network television — let’s just say Mom and Dad don’t approve. So, how did we get the network to agree to a smoking episode? And why? Simply put, we were all excited about telling a story where Mickey and Sabrina’s bad habit and selfishness would affect the family, specifically Ben (Jack Stanton). We just had to convince the network that this wasn’t an episode glorifying smoking; it was an episode condemning it. Thankfully, Fox is like the cool parent of the network world and believed in our take enough to let us push the boundaries and show the characters actually smoking." So, it seems that television is more under the pressure of either wanting to "do the right thing" or not upsetting anti-smoking advocates that could perhaps start a campaign to get a show canceled. [1] https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-movies-4071918 https://www.thoughtco.com/mpaa-ratings-and-tobacco-use-in-mo... [2] https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode-6/ https://ew.com/tv/2017/01/17/the-mick-recap-season-1-episode...