Cigarette smoking is the top cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S., and about 90% of those who die from smoking begin as adolescents. Because smoking-related mass media messages (such as episodes of smoking in films and advertisements) significantly increase adolescent smoking, media literacy, defined as analysis and evaluation of mass media messages, presents a promising new framework for development of innovative school-based tobacco control programs. Media literacy may be more effective than standard tobacco education among the populations that are at greatest risk for smoking, such as African-Americans and the socio-economically disadvantaged, and national organizations have called for use of media literacy to reduce smoking. However, anti-smoking media literacy programs have been neither widely implemented nor well-evaluated.