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NY Times snuffs out tobacco
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April 28, 1999: 4:54 p.m. ET
Nation's third-largest paper declares its pages off-limits to tobacco advertisements
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Effective Saturday, the New York Times will join a small but growing contingent of U.S. newspapers to ban tobacco advertising from their pages.
The Times announced the new policy Wednesday in an article within its own publication, citing concerns about "the harmful effects of smoking." The ban will cover advertisements for all retail tobacco products, including cigarettes, cigars and pipe tobacco, a company spokeswoman said.
Less than 1 percent of the newspaper's $1 billion in current advertising revenues come from tobacco products.
Times spokeswoman Lisa Carparelli said tobacco products will join a list of other legal products -- like handguns, Mace or tear gas -- banned by the paper because of the risk the newspaper claims they pose to society.
Carparelli said the paper does and will continue to accept alcohol advertising because "in moderation, alcohol is safe."
"Tobacco, even when used in moderation, is not safe," she said.
The ban applies only to the Times and not its other publications, including The Boston Globe. Those papers will retain the autonomy to make similar decisions on their own, the publication said.
Already reeling from a $206 billion litigation settlement last November which adds billboards to the banned list of advertising medians, the Times decision could evolve into a potentially devastating blow for the tobacco industry if other papers decide to follow suit.
Only a handful of other papers have announced previous bans -- including The Seattle Times and The Christian Science Monitor -- but the New York Times is by far the largest.
The New York Times' stock closed unchanged Wednesday at 35.
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