3M Quits Smoking

WASHINGTON,D.C.: The Marlboro Man and Joe Camel will soon be harder to find along the nation's highways. 3M Media, one of the nation's largest billboard companies, announced Thursday that it will stop accepting tobacco advertising at the end of the year, and that all of its contracts with tobacco companies will expire by the end of 1998. The move comes under pressure from stockholders of the parent company concerned by the morality of advertising products blamed for killing 400,000 Americans each year. Long banned from advertising on television or radio, the tobacco industry poured some $151 million into outdoor advertising last year, a figure that accounted for 10 percent of outdoor advertisers' revenue. President Clinton praised the decision, and said billboards persuaded minors to take up smoking. The tobacco companies, in a bitter response, denied the connection between billboards and teen smokers, but added that other outdoor advertising companies were still willing to sell space.