Big Tobacco enters consumer electronics

What if any one of the big tobacco companis such as RJ Reynolds, Philip Morris, or BAT had diversified into consumer electronics during the 1970s?
 
What if any one of the big tobacco companis such as RJ Reynolds, Philip Morris, or BAT had diversified into consumer electronics during the 1970s?

Vaping becomes a thing twenty years sooner (as they pretend to be good citizens by phasing out paper cigarettes) ? Does it require any tech not available back then?
 
RJR might given the whole deal with RJR Nabisco and all. They had a bunch of various interests (although mostly in food).

Vaping becomes a thing twenty years sooner (as they pretend to be good citizens by phasing out paper cigarettes) ? Does it require any tech not available back then?

Which would open them up to massive lawsuits since they'd be admitting they'd been making a dangerous product. Then lawyers ask how long they knew about this, and they find that the industry had known since the 50s and had been bankrolling groups to deny the evidence.

Also, vaping was possible back then and actually discussed within the industry since the 70s IIRC, but a "nicotine delivery device" was regulated by the FDA (unlike cigarettes and such) and that combined with the above legal issues canned the idea. Big Tobacco killed one or two early vaping prototypes too in the 80s as potential competitors.
 
I could see any of these companies diversifying into any number of areas when the times where good and they had spare cash. It makes sense as consumer trends can rapidly change even for an addictive product like tobacco.
 
Have they ever explored doing so? Companies don’t generally enter completely unrelated industries without cause.
The tobacco firm R. J. Reynolds bought the snack food company Nabisco in 1985 to form RJR Nabisco, partly as a way of diversifying and partly from the 1980s fashion for conglomerates. It was taken over by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in a leveraged buyout a couple of years later, as covered Bryan Burrough's and John Helyar's book Barbarians at the Gate.

In the UK Imperial Tobacco had over the years picked up a range of unrelated companies such as Courage Brewery, Golden Wonder, Ross Frozen Food, a wholesaling business, a hotel and catering arm, and others. They were taken over by Hanson Trust in 1986 who, in an impressive piece of business, sold off the various operations for a little over ninety per cent of what they had originally paid and kept the highly profitable tobacco company.


Marlboro tried something like proto vaping in the 90s. An electronic doohickey that heated tobbacco instead of burning it. Didn't work very well and tasted like ass. Premier.
IIRC Premier were an R.J. Reynolds product whilst Marlboro is a Philip Morris brand, unless I'm missing something.
 
The tobacco firm R. J. Reynolds bought the snack food company Nabisco in 1985 to form RJR Nabisco, partly as a way of diversifying and partly from the 1980s fashion for conglomerates. It was taken over by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in a leveraged buyout a couple of years later, as covered Bryan Burrough's and John Helyar's book Barbarians at the Gate.

In the UK Imperial Tobacco had over the years picked up a range of unrelated companies such as Courage Brewery, Golden Wonder, Ross Frozen Food, a wholesaling business, a hotel and catering arm, and others. They were taken over by Hanson Trust in 1986 who, in an impressive piece of business, sold off the various operations for a little over ninety per cent of what they had originally paid and kept the highly profitable tobacco company.



IIRC Premier were an R.J. Reynolds product whilst Marlboro is a Philip Morris brand, unless I'm missing something.
I stand corrected, at least in regards to the tobacco industry.
 
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I think it would be disappointingly mundane if BAT or RJR got into consumer electronics. Maybe they'd buy some electronics company sometime in the 70s or 80s as Japanese imported electronics were taking over the market, while the tobacco industry was hitting record profitability before lawsuits and antitobacco campaigns hit them hard. Or speaking of Japan, Japan Tobacco, who also had quite a bit of interests in non-tobacco industries, could do something like that with said Japanese companies. But there wouldn't be too much link to tobacco other than common ownership. Most people don't think of Kraft products (at one point owned by Philip Morris) or Nabisco products (at one point owned by RJR) as being linked to Big Tobacco after all, or all the brands under the same ownership with today's incarnations of Big Tobacco.
 
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