TOBACCO: The Controversial Princess

Puffing cigarettes, cigars and pipes until the smoke taxed the air conditioning at Miami Beach's plush hotel Fontainebleau, the men who know tobacco best gathered this week to pay homage to the persistence of one of the world's most widespread habits. More than 11,000 strong, the delegates to the annual convention of the National Association of Tobacco Distributors—which sells 75% of all U.S. tobacco products—peered at exhibits that traced tobacco from field to lip, critically taste-tested piles of free cigarettes, jostled happily through luncheons, dinners,...