Cigarette maker Philip Morris International said Thursday its second-quarter profit fell 9 percent as the stronger dollar shrunk profit earned in other currencies. Still, it raised its 2009 profit estimate.

Even though Americans bought fewer cigarettes in the second quarter, profit rose 9 percent at Altria Group Inc., owner of the nation’s biggest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA.

Altria Group Inc. said on Friday that Murray S. Kessler, chief executive of the smokeless tobacco company UST Inc., will leave the company at the end of June after overseeing key elements of UST’s integration into Altria.

Cigarette companies have long pursued the holy grail of the tobacco industry: a product that is less risky to health and acceptable to consumers.

Philip Morris wants smokers to try new things—but they’re a tough group to convince. Just this year, Philip Morris pulled the silvery packs of its Marlboro UltraSmooth cigarettes from store shelves after a three-year effort to test a complicated new filter.

As the U.S. market for cigarettes shrinks, the country’s largest manufacturer is toiling away at perfecting its products and developing other ones at its new research center in Richmond.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has online records of patents granted and patent applications at http://patft.uspto.gov.
The National Institutes of Health and National Library of Medicine have a database of medical journal abstracts at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed.

Philip Morris USA pulled research even closer to its vest this year, quietly canceling a multimillion-dollar grant program for young scientists.

Here’s an ABC of some additives that go into cigarettes — not all at one time — compiled from a list of 599 additives disclosed by tobacco-makers to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

Philip Morris is far and away the leader among cigarette companies when it comes to research and development. In the past two years, the company has applied for more than 70 patents, a Richmond Times-Dispatch review found.

Inside Philip Morris USA’s Research & Technology Center in downtown Richmond, the company is doing more than just scientific research.

On Sunday and Monday, Times-Dispatch writers David Ress and John Reid Blackwell examine the future of the tobacco industry that is being explored at the Philip Morris Center for Research and Technology in Richmond. Read the articles Sunday and Monday and join us Monday at noon for a live chat with the writers.