MONTREAL – A famous former American tobacco executive says the industry worked to suppress knowledge that smoking was harmful to one’s health.

Dr. Jeffrey Wigand is the former tobacco executive and scientist whose decision to become a whistleblower became the plot of a Hollywood film.

Now testifying in a Quebec class-action case, he says employees who worked in research and development were well aware of the effects of smoking — even as the industry sounded a reassuring tone in public.

Wigand says he was hired in 1989 by Brown & Williamson to create what he described as a less-harmful cigarette, so the company obviously understood the danger.

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