NEW YORK — All the huffing and puffing against smoking has failed to blow tobacco’s house down.

Industry analysts say profits in the tobacco business are growing at a double-digit clip due to higher prices, improved production efficiency, stable leaf costs and clever marketing. They expect similar increases in the future.

But the anti-smoking drive could have an unintended side effect. Some media executives say newspapers and magazines will be hurt if new limits on tobacco advertising are adopted.

Publishers planning new magazines, for instance, must consider in devising a business plan whether the magazine could survive if tobacco advertising were banned.

Tobacco opponents say their chief goal has not been to make tobacco less profitable but to raise awareness of health issues and to puncture the glamorous image of smoking that some cigarette ads still promote.

Results of their efforts are readily apparent — smoking is prohibited on most domestic air flights and in many public places such as restaurants, hospitals and offices. One tobacco company withdrew plans to test a new cigarette aimed at blacks after disclosure of the plans stirred a barrage of complaints that it was preying on a minority group.

The segment of the adult population that smokes tumbled to 29.1 percent in 1987, the most recent year for which such statistics are available, from 40.7 percent in 1966, the U.S. Office on Smoking and Health says.

Cigarette sales volume has also dropped steadily in recent years.

The Tobacco Institute, a trade organization, said cigarette shipments dropped to 562 billion in 1988, down 2.3 percent from 1987 and 12.2 percent from the peak of 640 billion in 1984.

John C. Maxwell Jr., who follows the tobacco business for Wheat First Securities in Richmond, Va., estimates sales dropped by 6.1 percent to 524 billion in 1989. He said the decline would have been half as large without unusual efforts by one company to reduce inventories held by wholesalers.

But the decline in sales volume and the percentage of smokers has not translated into a decline in cigarette revenue or profits.

The Tobacco Institute said domestic cigarette revenue reached a record $35.8 billion in 1988, up 6.5 percent from 1987.

Tobacco company domestic pretax operating profits rose more than 10 percent last year to $7.2 billion, said industry watcher Diana Temple. Philip Morris USA, the industry leader with 41.9 percent of the market and the best-selling Marlboro brand, had an operating profit of $3.6 billion alone on revenue of $9.5 billion in 1989.

Ms. Temple, an analyst for the Salomon Brothers Inc. investment firm, said the industry has reported an average 14 percent annual increase in operating profits over the past five years. She said the dropoff in 1989 reflected the unusually large volume decline, not anti-smoking efforts.

Maxwell said the anti-smoking effort hasn’t cut into tobacco profits and he forecast a continuation of double-digit increases in operating profits for the forseeable future.

He said the tobacco companies have been able to overcome the impact of volume declines by raising prices as often as twice a year. Ms. Temple said an average pack of cigarettes cost $1.44 in 1989, up 11 percent from 1988.

Tobacco companies also have controlled costs by investing in machinery that produces nearly twice as many cigarettes a minute. In addition, domestic growers have been reluctant to raise raw leaf prices, fearing cigarette makers will buy from foreign suppliers, Maxwell said.

Analysts also said that despite the well-publicized misstep in developing a new cigarette for blacks, the tobacco companies have proven adept marketers who have been able to identify customers and tailor messages for them.

Ms. Temple said tobacco companies also have grown more profitable because few have dared challenge the six leaders — Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, American Brands and Liggett Group. “It is an unglamorous business that doesn’t attract a lot of new entrants,” she said.

Proposals to restrict tobacco advertising would not necessarily hurt profitability and could improve it, analysts said.

Maxwell said an ad ban would save money that would “come right down to the bottom line” for tobacco companies.

Ms. Temple said the tobacco companies would probably shift ad spending to promotions, such as distributing free samples, sponsoring concerts or sports events or setting up more store displays.

Federal Trade Commission figures show the tobacco companies spent $2.58 billion on advertising and promotions in 1987, including $413.5 million on advertising in newspapers and magazines.

A recent study by a group of advertisers, media companies and advertising agencies said that by 1993, a ban on tobacco advertising could drive 165 magazines, or 1.3 percent of the projected total of 12,490, and 12 newspapers, or 0.8 percent of the projected total of 1,506, out of business.

It said prices would have to rise to compensate for lost ad revenue.

Critics of the study said it failed to allow sufficiently for the possibility that other advertisers would fill the void left by tobacco ads, just as occurred when tobacco ads were banned on radio and TV in 1971.

But the possibility that tobacco ads will be banned is already figuring into plans for new magazines.

Michael Klingensmith, publisher of Time Warner Inc.’s month-old Entertainment Weekly, said the magazine gets about 10 percent of its ad revenue from cigarette companies and supports the right to advertise a legal product.

But he said in drafting the magazine’s business plan he had to consider the possibility of a tobacco ad ban. “Anybody launching a magazine today would have to consider that,” he said.

Alan Wragg, publisher of TV Time, a new weekly TV listings magazine, said he is counting on a “much smaller contribution from cigarette advertising than if we were doing this five years ago.”