RJR has a large brand portfolio, which includes Camel, Newport, Doral, Eclipse, Kent, and Pall Mall.

[3] 1907's Prince Albert smoking tobacco became the company's national showcase product, which led to high-profile advertising in New York City's Union Square.

The Reynolds company imported so much French cigarette paper and Turkish tobacco for Camel cigarettes that Winston-Salem was designated by the United States federal government as an official port of entry for the United States, despite the city being 200 miles (320 km) inland.

[3] In 1917, the company bought 84 acres (34 ha) of property in Winston-Salem and built 180 houses that it sold at cost to workers, to form a development called "Reynoldstown".

[3] Reynolds Co.'s success during this period can also be measured by the concurrent success of many Winston-Salem companies that received large amounts of business from Reynolds: Wachovia National Bank became one of the largest banks in the Southeast, and the company's law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice became the largest law firm in North Carolina.

Finally, the private equity takeover firm Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts & Co (commonly referred to as KKR) was responsible for the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco.

These articles were later used as the basis of a bestselling book, Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco,[7] and then into a television movie.

As a result, in February 1989, RJR Nabisco paid executive F. Ross Johnson US$53,800,000 as part of a golden handshake clause, the largest such deal in history at the time,[8] as severance compensation for his acceptance of the KKR takeover.

[10] In 1998, the company was part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement with 46 U.S. states, agreeing to pay smoking-related health care costs and restrict advertising in return for protection against private lawsuits.

[11] In 2001–2011, the European Union was involved in three civil suits against R. J. Reynolds in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, accusing the company of selling black market cigarettes to drug traffickers and mobsters from Italy, Russia, Colombia and the Balkans.

In May 2006 former R. J. Reynolds vice-president of sales Stan Smith pleaded guilty to charges of defrauding the Government of Canada of $1.2 billion (CDN) through a cigarette smuggling operation.

[16] Since 2006, R. J. Reynolds has been the subject of a Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) campaign to reduce the exploitative nature of its tobacco procurement system.

FLOC's goal is to meet with Reynolds executives, growers, and workers in collective bargaining to improve farmworkers' pay and living conditions.

Despite repeated refusals to meet from CEO Susan Ivey, FLOC continues the campaign against R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

[17] In 2010, Reynolds American announced that the company would close its manufacturing plants in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico.

[19] The deal also included the sale of the Kool, Winston, Salem, and blu brands to Imperial Tobacco for $7.1 billion.

[23] In late 2005, R. J. Reynolds opened the Marshall McGearty Lounge in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago as part of a marketing strategy to promote a brand of "superpremium" cigarettes and counteract local smoking bans in restaurants and cafes that took effect in 2006.

The lounge, which offered thirteen varieties of exclusive "hand-crafted" cigarette, along with alcohol and "light food", had been "well received" in the neighborhood and by the targeted upscale market, according to company officials.

This criticism was reinforced by a 1991 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association[25] showing that more children five and six years old could recognize Joe Camel than could recognize Mickey Mouse or Fred Flintstone (coincidentally, Fred Flintstone was also once used to sell R. J. Reynolds's Winston cigarettes) and alleged that the Joe Camel advertisement campaign was targeting children, despite R. J. Reynolds's contention that the campaign had been researched only among adults and was directed only at the smokers of other brands.

[27] He concluded that clinical data was confirming the fact that tobacco was "an important etiologic factor in the induction of primary cancer of the lung".

[28] In May 2011, a Miami-Dade Circuit jury awarded Julie Reese, an 82-year-old Cape Coral smoker represented by The Ferraro Law Firm, a total verdict of $1 million from R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, after she developed laryngeal cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

[30][31] On February 25, 2020, Chief Judge Rodney Gilstrap of the United States District for the Eastern District of Texas determined that Reynolds remained liable for its full portion of an annual $8 billion settlement payment based on a settlement agreement that Reynolds reached with the State of Texas in 1998.

Chief Judge Gilstrap disagreed in a 92-page memorandum opinion and order, finding that Reynolds's position was "oppressive, inequitable, and unreasonable" in addition to being contrary to governing law.

Brands still manufactured but no longer receiving significant marketing support include Capri, Carlton, GPC, Lucky Strike, Misty, Monarch, More, Now, Old Gold, Tareyton, Vantage, and Viceroy.

Market research indicated that many African-American smokers open packs from the bottom, possibly to avoid crushing the filters.

"[35] The promotional blitz was scheduled to begin on February 5, 1990, and Philadelphia was selected as the test market because of its large black population.

Before it began, the campaign came under fire from religious, health and black-interest groups who expressed concerns about promoting cigarette smoking to African-Americans.

[36] On January 19, 1990, Reynolds abruptly decided to cancel the cigarette, saying that the test marketing would no longer be reliable because of what it called, "the unfair and biased attention that brand has received".

Much of the Building 256 complex burned in one of the city's worst fires ever on August 27, 1998, when the former factories were being renovated for Piedmont Triad Research Park.

Purple Crow chief executive and president Dan Calhoun confirmed his company had a contract to buy the property.