The head of the world's second-largest cigarette firm has admitted that smoking is bad for you and people are "better off" avoiding tobacco.
The comments by British American Tobacco Executive chairman Mr Martin Broughton in an interview in the
Times
are likely to be seized on by lawyers seeking billions of dollars from the company and rivals in smoking-related lawsuits, the newspaper said.
In the interview, Mr Broughton said his son and daughter did not smoke but he would have warned them not to if he "caught them behind the bike sheds" when they were younger.
"I said to them 'I would advise you not to smoke. But if you want to smoke it is your affair. It is not good for you. You are better off not smoking,'" he told the Times.
The Timescalled Mr Broughton's comments "an unprecedented admission that smoking is bad for you" and "the clearest warning yet wrung from a tobacco chief".
Cigarette companies have refused to side with the medical profession and the anti-smoking lobby over the health threats posed by tobacco. Instead, they have championed smoking as a matter of personal choice while displaying on their products government advice that tobacco can cause diseases that kill.
Mr Broughton said he abstains from smoking cigarettes for health reasons apart from the "occasional after-dinner cigar", the Timesreported. He said his decision was founded in the fear of contracting a smoking-related disease, the newspaper said.
"I think there are health risks attached to smoking," he told the Times.