Smoking ads- time to quit?

After an embarrassing ad layout for Rolling Stone, cig giant RJ Reynolds decided to drop their magazine advertisements (though the company insists that they made the decision way in advance, this little fiasco likely didn’t help matters). On the surface, this sounds like a good thing- less encouragement for people to smoke. But one big problem is that with publications in such dire straits nowadays, the loss of RJ’s ad dollars is going to hurt them even more. That ad money is what helps keep them afloat. This might mean even deeper cuts, layoffs, buy-outs, etc. at a number of publications. On balance, not much of a plus, is it?