The Newport cigarettes brand was originally founded in 1957 by the Lorillard Tobacco Company. Newport cigarettes originated in Ireland and were introduced into culture mainly for drinking men of the time. The spinnaker, present on all backpacks since the late 1950s, is meant to benefit from the association with sailing.
The original Newport cigarettes had a white filter with a hint of mint; both disappeared in 1969, and so the white filter was replaced by a standard filter. Classic full-flavor Newport cigarettes have been touted for years as cigarettes that allow you to “enjoy the full flavor of menthol without drowning out the pure flavor of tobacco.”
In the mid-1980s, Newport launched an advertising campaign targeting the blacks in urban areas. Two years later, Newport cigarettes became the fifth most popular cigarette on the market. Thanks to this, Newport cigarettes gained a dominant market share of the blacks; A 2005 study found that 49.5% of all cigarette sales to the blacks came from Newport cigarettes. Newport has been the second best-selling cigarette brand since 1996, second only to the Altria Marlboro brand.
A 2004 study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the percentage of teenage smokers of Newport cigarettes doubled from 1989 to 1996. Researcher Karen Gerlach pointed out that Newport made the most significant progress in the teenage markets of Hispanics and white Americans in those years. A 1998 report by the Massachusetts Department of Health indicated that Newports cigarettes, along with unfiltered Camel cigarettes, contain the highest levels of nicotine in cigarettes on the market. Over the next six years, Lorillard Tobacco increased the amount of nicotine in Newport by 10%.
In 2015, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company acquired Newport and the entire Lorillard Tobacco Company for $27.4 billion. Newports accounts for about 35 percent of menthol cigarette sales countrywide. It is the most popular brand of menthol cigarettes sold since 1993.