The Fastest Growing Cigarette in the U.S.

For the past many years, much of the tobacco control world's notice has been focused on Marlboro Cigarettes and Camel and their advertising and promotional campaigns featuring the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel. While this was happening, Newport Cigarettes sales have been rising. Newport, for many years the No. 1 menthol cigarette in the United States, is now second in status to long-time leader, Marlboro.

According to an April 2000 article, "For the second year in a row, Greensboro's Lorillard Tobacco Co. was the only major cigarette maker to ship more product nationwide than it did the year before." 1999, Newport accounted for more than three-quarters of Lorillard's sales, and claimed a 7.5 percent share of the about $50 billion cigarette market, up from 6.9 percent in 1998, according to the Maxwell Report.

A year earlier, the same publication called Newport the "fastest growing cigarette in the country" and quoted a tobacco analyst as saying, "Pound for pound, Newport is the strongest brand in the market.