Tobacco Has Been Friend and Foe of Reynolds Grandson

Tobacco has made his family flourish, but these days the grandson of R.J. Reynolds sees no good in cigarettes.

A descendant of the biggest name in the industry who lost his father to emphysema brought on by smoking, he has spent the last 3 years speaking out against the industry, encouraging people to stop puffing, and fighting for restrictions on cigarette advertising and sales.

And Sunday, Patrick Reynolds’ campaign for a smoke-free America brought him to Anaheim and a sympathetic audience of doctors gathered for the California Medical Assn. convention.

Reynolds, who gave away his last two shares of company stock last year to help finance the successful voter initiative that increased California’s cigarette tax, said he does not consider it odd that he is using the Reynolds name to fight the industry that made his family millionaires.

“Cigarettes took my dad away from my life. If a father isn’t there to show his son the family business, he’s got to make his own way,” he told the people gathered for a session called “News From the Front--Update on the Tobacco Revolution.”

“My only memories of my father are of a man lying on his back,” hooked up to an oxygen tank, he said. “I remember him gasping for breath.”

Reynolds, 40, said he sold his shares of R.J. Reynolds stock in 1979, even though he was a smoker then, because “I didn’t feel comfortable garnering my income from that. . . .

“In one hand I had a cigarette, and in the other I had the phone, telling my broker to divest,” Reynolds said in comments after his speech. (A few years later, Reynolds was given two more shares of family stock by his half-brother, Will, who made him promise not to sell them. Instead, he donated them to the Proposition 99 campaign last year.)

Reynolds, who began smoking at 18, finally stopped in 1984. “I got hooked like everyone else,” he said. Two years later, he began his crusade against the tobacco industry.

His top priority in his fight against tobacco companies, he told the doctors Sunday, is to get Congress to limit the export of U.S. cigarettes. Since 1968, smoking abroad has increased 83%, he said.

Recruiting Abroad

It is a travesty that as the numbers of smokers in the United States decrease, American tobacco companies are magnifying their efforts to recruit new customers abroad, particularly in Third World countries.

Yet, poor people abroad can least afford to buy cigarettes or pay for medical care when they develop lung and heart disease, he said.

“They are taking advantage of people eager for the U.S. products but whose awareness of the health consequences of smoking is far less than our own,” he said. In the Philippines, he said, no warning labels are required on cigarettes, as they are in the United States, and higher tar levels are allowed in some countries.

“We have one set of standards for our own citizens and another set of standards for foreign peoples,” he said. “As a direct consequence of the tobacco companies’ recent advertising and marketing efforts, there will be tens of millions of deaths which would not have otherwise occurred and immeasurable pain and human suffering.”

Tobacco companies have maintained that there is no proven link between smoking and disease.

Treat Cigarettes as Liquor

His second priority, he said, is to treat cigarettes as liquor and ban sales to people under 21. Merchants who sell to minors should face harsh penalties, he said, adding that more than 90% of smokers begin before they are 20.

Reynolds also called for a ban on all cigarette advertising.

“Cigarette advertising is, in my opinion, the biggest lie ever perpetrated on the American public,” he said. Tobacco companies spend $8 on advertising for every person in the United States each year, he said.

“When cigarettes are shown to be killing 1,000 Americans every day of the year, to allow continued advertising of them is plainly a great wrong in our society,” Reynolds said.

Further, he said, cigarette taxes should be raised. For every 10-cent increase in the price of a pack, there is a corresponding decrease in purchases among minors, he said. If taxes were raised enough to cover the health costs of smoking, each pack would cost $3, he said. Nonsmokers, who make up 75% of the population, are paying the health care costs of smoking, Reynolds contended.

Helped Fight for Ban

While Reynolds helped fight for the current ban on smoking on flights of 2 hours or less, he said that the ban should be extended to all flights. Airliners recirculate air during flights, and because more smoke accumulates over long periods of time, the air becomes filled with even more secondhand smoke on longer flights, he said.

When he is not speaking against the tobacco companies, Reynolds, who lives in Beverly Hills, is trying to revive his acting career. (He had a bit part in the movie “Nashville” and starred in “Eliminators” a few years ago.) He recently incorporated a nonprofit group called the Patrick Reynolds’ Foundation for a Smoke-free America to fight the tobacco industry.

He also has finished a book, “The Gilded Leaf: Triumph, Tragedy and Tobacco,” a history of the Reynolds family, which he says is fraught with business, political and personal intrigue. The book, published by Little, Brown & Co., will be released April 26.

His family has flourished on and been devastated by tobacco, he said. His grandfather, R.J. Reynolds, chewed tobacco and died of cancer of the pancreas in 1918, when his son, R.J. (Dick) Reynolds Jr., was 12. R.J. Jr. died in 1964 when Patrick was 15, and his mother, a smoker, later died of heart disease. Two aunts, also smokers, died of emphysema and cancer, he said.

“My family was decimated by cigarettes,” he said.

Reynolds did not know his father well, and he died in seclusion, he said. R.J. Jr. married four times. He had four sons during his first marriage and two--including Patrick Reynolds--during his second. He had no children during his third marriage. He was married 3 years to his fourth wife, and a daughter was born the day after R. J. Jr. died, Reynolds said.

“None of us even knew she was pregnant,” he said.

Although some of his cousins are not completely happy with his fight against the family business, Reynolds said he gets along well with his brothers.

His father disinherited his sons and left his fortune to his last wife, Reynolds said. Although there is some speculation that the will was changed, another theory is that his father “wanted his sons to work.” Reynolds and his brother and half-brothers inherited their interest in the family business from their grandmother, who acquired the fortune from their grandfather.

“I’m sure he never foresaw this,” Reynolds said of his fight with the tobacco industry.