Brown & Williamson

Brown & Williamson was an American tobacco company and subsidiary of the giant British American Tobacco, that produced several popular cigarette brands. It became infamous as the focus of investigations for chemically enhancing the addictiveness of cigarettes. Its former vice-president of research and development, Jeffrey Wigand, was the whistleblower in an investigation conducted by CBS news program 60 Minutes, an event that was dramatized in the film The Insider. Wigand claimed that B&W had introduced chemicals such as ammonia into cigarettes to increase nicotine delivery and increase addictiveness.

Brown & Williamson had its headquarters at Louisville, Kentucky, until July 30, 2004, when the U.S. operations of Brown & Williamson merged with R.J. Reynolds, creating a new publicly traded parent company, Reynolds American Inc.

B&W was also involved in genetically modifying tobacco (notably the controversial Y1 strain).

Brown & Williamson was founded in Winston (today's Winston-Salem), North Carolina, as a partnership of George T. Brown and his brother-in-law Robert Lynn Williamson, whose father was already operating two chewing tobacco manufacturing facilities. Initially, the new partnership took over one of the elder Williamson's factories. In February 1894, the new company, calling itself Brown & Williamson, hired 30 workers and began manufacturing in a leased facility. In 1927, the Brown and Williamson families sold the business to London-based British American Tobacco. The business was reorganized as the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corporation. Manufacturing and distribution were expanded, and work on a new B&W factory in Louisville was begun.

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