Ex-Scientist at Brown & Williamson Testifies

Jeffrey Wigand, the former Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. scientist whose story was dramatized in the 1999 film “The Insider,” testified that his former company manipulated nicotine in cigarettes to keep smokers hooked.

“We designed for nicotine,” Wigand told U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler, who is presiding over a $280-billion racketeering suit by the Justice Department against Brown & Williamson and other U.S. cigarette makers. “The only reason people smoke is for nicotine.”

Wigand, Brown & Williamson’s chief of research and development from 1989 to 1993, testified that company scientists also knew that cigarettes cause cancer and other diseases.

From Bloomberg News

* Scott Andrew Brabson, a former vice president at Vans Inc., pleaded guilty to charges related to the collection of $4.7 million in bribes from Asian manufacturers. He could face as many as 71 months in prison at his sentencing April 11 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.