As Patrick Reynolds, the tobacco fortune heir, stated in his testimony to a U.S. Congress subcommittee: “I believe that cigarette advertising is promotion of a poisonous product and that it is moral, right and good to eliminate all advertising of cigarettes.”

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Defectors From the Smoking Trade

In 1875 R. J. Reynolds established a chewing-tobacco company in North Carolina. In 1913 they made their first cigarette​—the Camel brand. From there the business has prospered to become second only to Philip Morris in the cigarette sales and earnings league in the United States. The great-grandson of the founder is Patrick Reynolds, now in his early 40’s. Formerly a smoker for 15 years, he dropped a bombshell on the tobacco world.

In 1986 he appeared before a congressional subcommittee to testify against smoking! Since then he has become a regular campaigner against tobacco usage. What triggered his antipathy to the product that made his family’s fortune? Remembering watching as a boy as his father, a heavy smoker, slowly died of emphysema. Patrick stated: “My memories of my father are all of a man always short of breath, and counting the time he had left to live.”

Patrick decided to do something positive with his life. “I saw I could make a difference and do something with my life.” He said that to continue to promote “proven killers” would be “plainly immoral.”

“If the hand that once fed me is the tobacco industry, then that same hand has killed millions of people and will continue to kill millions more unless people wake up to the hazards of cigarettes.”​—The New York Times, October 25, 1986.