Something unusual is cropping up alongside the tomatoes, eggplant and okra in Scott Byars’ vegetable garden—the elephantine leaves of 30 tobacco plants. Driven largely by ever-rising tobacco prices, he’s among a growing number of smokers who have turned to their green thumbs to cultivate tobacco plants to blend their own cigarettes, cigars and chew.

As chief public-health officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs, Dr. Lawrence Deyton is credited with improving the agency’s tobacco-cessation programs for veterans. Now, Deyton will lead the Food and Drug Administration’s newly created Center for Tobacco Products, which is tasked with regulating the $80 billion U.S. tobacco industry.

Philip Morris USA has started test-marketing roll-your-own cigarette tobacco, its first venture into that market. This summer, the nation’s No. 1 cigarette-maker started selling pouches and canisters of L&M brand tobacco in Maine and Michigan, spokesman Bill Phelps said. “It’s a very small market, but it’s growing fast,“ he said.

Big changes are coming to the tobacco industry, and we’ve ramped up our coverage in the Richmond Times-Dispatch to keep you informed. Tobacco has long been a focus of our coverage—the business has been a key component of Virginia’s economy since soon after its founding at Jamestown. Now more than ever, Richmond is at the heart of the industry.

California: The Bullock case. A Los Angeles court is rehearing a claim for punitive damages in light of a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Oregon case against Philip Morris (the Williams case) that held punitive damages can’t be calculated based on harm to people who aren’t parties to a lawsuit.
The Whiteley case. Philip Morris is appealing a 2007 verdict that a smoker’s illnesses the company caused resulted in $2.5 million of financial loss to the smoker. In 2007, a jury ruled the smoker was not entitled to punitive damages.

She started smoking Marlboro cigarettes in 1955, the year Philip Morris relaunched the brand. Forty-five years later, Betty Bullock had a two-pack-a-day habit and a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. Bullock was among the roughly four in 10 smokers who succeeded in getting a case against Henrico County-based Philip Morris USA into court and winning. Most lose on appeal, but Bullock’s case still has legs, though not as the $28 billion case it once was.

Altria Group Inc., the largest U.S. tobacco company, said second-quarter profit rose 8.6 percent after price increases. The Henrico County-based maker of Marlboro cigarettes also raised its full-year forecast. Net income increased to $1.01 billion, or 49 cents a share, from $930 million, or 45 cents, a year earlier. Excluding items, adjusted earnings were 50 cents a share, beating the analysts’ estimates of 47 cents.

The colors are green-on-dark green, but the iconic chevron still is there as Philip Morris USA launches yet another version of Marlboro. The nation’s biggest cigarette maker’s newest Marlboro variety—its 15th—is called Blend No. 54, a menthol-flavored cigarette with a tobacco blend that Philip Morris spokesman Bill Phelps described as having a richer, bolder taste. The green-on-green boxes have been showing up in stores in recent weeks.

It took more than a decade for Congress to grant the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate tobacco products. Now that the FDA has been given that job, the agency must set up a new regulatory office.

Here are some of the effective dates for FDA regulations of tobacco products:
  July 22, 2009: Use of descriptors such as “light” and “mild” prohibited for newly introduced cigarettes.
  Sept. 20, 2009: Artificial flavors other than menthol banned from cigarettes.
  Oct. 1, 2009: Start of fee collections from tobacco companies to fund the new FDA tobacco center.

Some of the newer smokeless products that tobacco companies are betting on may not be as good at helping smokers quit as the industry hopes, a new federally funded study by Virginia Commonwealth University shows. And that means they may not be the kind of reduced-harm product that is the industry’s latest hope, now that tobacco is regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Winning FDA designation as a “potential reduced-exposure product” could be worth billions of dollars, and a key element of that could be whether an item keeps smokers from lighting up.

The U.S. government’s new tobacco regulations spell out the words, size and color of new cigarette warning labels—but despite much publicity about tough new warnings, don’t expect to see any for three years.

Philip Morris USA has put some of its South Richmond and Chesterfield County properties up for sale as the tobacco company cuts costs and consolidates its operations in a smaller U.S. cigarette market. The Henrico County-based company is seeking to sell more than 570,000 square feet of office, laboratory, warehouse and manufacturing space just off Bells Road, on property adjacent to its cigarette plant off Interstate 95.

Philip Morris International Inc., maker of Marlboro and other cigarettes for sale overseas, has agreed to buy a Swedish company’s South African snuff and pipe-tobacco operations for roughly $222 million. Philip Morris International estimated that Swedish Match South Africa Ltd.‘s products account for about 31 percent of total tobacco consumption in South Africa. The brands involved in the deal, announced yesterday, include Boxer, Best Blend and Taxi.

Under new regulations, snuff and cigars will have to go behind store counters, where cigarettes are now kept. How the different products share that space will be a challenge for tobacco companies.