Hughes, Ivor Wallace, Dr.
(CEO Brown & Williamson, TI Executive Committee) Ivor Wallace Hughes was The Chief Executive Officer of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company in 1983, also served on the Tobacco Institute Executive Committee in 1983 and was CTR Director 1/28/83.Biographical Information:
I. W. Hughes was one of the first scientists to lead a major tobacco manufacturer. Though little remembered today, Hughes’s 1979 ascendance to the post of president and chief operating officer of Brown & Williamson was a telling symbol of the crucial role that scientific research had begun to play in the fortunes of the tobacco industry.
Ivor Wallace “Wally” Hughes was born in Wales around 1925 and was educated at the University of Birmingham and at Oxford. He earned a bachelor of science in chemistry in 1946 and a doctorate in 1949. In 1956, Dr. Hughes went to work for the British-American Tobacco Company (BATCo) as a research scientist. In this position, he conducted research on “extractable nicotine” and nicotine administration. He was also heavily involved in Project Ariel, a BATCo effort to develop a safer cigarette, and in numerous other projects pertaining to the chemical composition of tobacco and of cigarette smoke.
Fourteen years later, in 1970, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to become the director of research and development for Brown & Williamson, BATCo’s American subsidiary. One of his first tasks in this new role was to review Oscar Auerbach and E. Cuyler Hammonds’s recently completed study on tumorigenicity in beagles. Hughes found numerous points of contention, noting for example that the human respiratory system provides the opportunity for buccal and mucus clearance, while a dog’s respiratory system does not afford that possibility. As a result, he expressed strong reservations about attempts to use beagles to analogize about humans.
Hughes also criticized several aspects of the study’s statistical methodology. In spite of these concerns, he concluded the report by stating, “I accept that significant tumorogenic [sic] conditions following inhalation has been achieved.” In addition, he characterized the overall standard of the study as “good,” and commented, “This paper must affect the thinking within B&W, and would seem to me to relegate stances on good or bad statistical evaluations to second place. Indeed, this publication could reverse the hoped-for consequence of something like Project Truth.”
In his review, Hughes also asked whether it would be “possible to adopt the stance that ‘the work is significant and important, and the industry will sponsor a research project (in which Auerbach collaborates) aimed at repeating the experiment under statistical control to determine the significance of the rate of incidence of invasive squamous carcinoma in relation to dosage, etc.’” The question raised by Hughes is especially noteworthy in light of the industry’s subsequent efforts to discredit the Auerbach/Hammond study.
Hughes’s many responsibilities at Brown & Williamson included serving on the Tobacco Working Group, which he did from 1972-74 and again in 1976-77. He appears to have viewed his role on the Tobacco Working Group as being to minimize the public relations damage to the industry. As described in The Cigarette Papers, Hughes frequently made suggestions about proposed Tobacco Working Group press releases and on at least one occasion sought advice from Brown & Williamson general counsel Ernest Pepples.
In 1972, Hughes was elected to Brown & Williamson’s corporate board of directors and then in 1979 he was tabbed to become the company’s new president and chief operating officer. The selection of a scientist to run the third-largest American tobacco firm was an intriguing choice, speaking volumes about the extent to which the health risks of smoking had become the tobacco industry’s most pressing concern. In 1980, he added the title of chairman. In the ensuing years, Hughes assumed several roles that showed how crucial it had become for tobacco industry decision-makers to possess a scientific background. In addition to his duties as top man at Brown & Williamson, Hughes served as chairman of the Tobacco Institute Executive Committee and as a director of the Council for Tobacco Research.
Perhaps most important, internal industry documents show that Hughes routinely received memos about completed, ongoing and proposed research. The topics ranged from ones he had focused on while a research scientist to new and emerging ones. For example, Hughes was the recipient of memos on proposed methods of monitoring tar levels, the use of menthol and pesticides, the results of a study of pH and nicotine levels, a competitive analysis of the chemical composition of various reconstituted brands of tobacco, and countless other documents that would have been too technical for most tobacco executives to read without help.
During his tenure as president and CEO of Brown & Williamson, Hughes also led the company’s expansion into the generic cigarette market and several new product lines. He also oversaw a structural reorganization that saw Brown & Williamson respond to declining sales by phasing out its Louisville manufacturing plant.
On March 22, 1985, I. W. Hughes died at Humana Hospital Suburban in Louisville after having battled an undisclosed illness for several months. He was only 59 and left a wife and one son. In his honor, the building that housed Brown & Williamson’s Research and Development and Engineering Departments was renamed the I. W. Hughes Technical Center.
Hughes’s death at a comparatively young age meant that his role was not subjected to testimony under oath, with the result that we know less about him than is the case with many of his contemporaries. Nonetheless he was a major figure in the tobacco industry during some of its most pivotal years and a symbol of a new direction.
Sources:
Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America (New York: Basic Books, 2007).
Stanton A. Glantz, John Slade, Lisa A. Bero, Peter Hanauer, and Deborah E. Barnes, editors, The Cigarette Papers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
Ivor Wallace Hughes, untitled review of Auerbach/Hammond study, February 11, 1970, http://tobaccodocuments.org/mn_ex/EXHIB_bn680004474-4476.html.
“Ivor Hughes, Tobacco Company Chief,” Miami Herald, March 25, 1985.
“Ivor Wallace Hughes Dies; Headed Tobacco Company,” New York Times, March 25, 1985.
Richard Kluger, Ashes to Ashes: America’s Hundred-Year Cigarette War and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris (New York: Vintage Books, 1996).
For More Biographical Information:
Standard & Poor’s Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives. 1984 edition. Volume 2: Directors and Executives. New York: Standard & Poor’s Corp., 1984. (St&PR 1984).
Who’s Who in America. 42nd edition, 1982-1983. Wilmette, IL: Marquis Who’s Who, 1982. (WhoAm 42).
Who’s Who in America. 43rd edition, 1984-1985. Wilmette, IL: Marquis Who’s Who, 1984. (WhoAm 43).
Who’s Who in Finance and Industry. 22nd edition, 1981-1982. Wilmette, IL: Marquis Who's Who, 1981. (WhoFI 22).
Who Was Who in America. Volume 8, 1982-1985.