When cigarette filters were made of asbestos (2023)

I found this article while researching Lorillard tobacco company. Nicolas Darvas mentions the company in a book he published in 1960:

  While most Wall Street stocks drifted or dropped, I continued my dancing tour of the world. In November 1957 I was appearing at the “Arc En Ciel” in Saigon when I noticed in Barron’s a stock unknown to me called LORILLARD.

  I did not know then that they were the manufacturers of a particular brand of filter-tip cigarettes and the filter-tip craze was about to sweep America, causing their production to leap up astronomically. Out in Saigon, all I knew was that LORILLARD began to emerge from the swamp of sinking stocks like a beacon. In spite of the bad market, it rose from 17 until, in the first week of October, it established itself in the narrow box 24/27. Its volume for that week was 126,700 shares, which sharply contrasted with its usual 10,000 shares earlier in the year.

  The steady rise in price and the high volume indicated to me that there was a tremendous interest in this stock. As for its fundamentals, I was satisfied as soon as I found out about the wide acceptance of their “Kent” and “Old Gold” cigarettes. I decided that if it showed signs of going above 27 I would buy it.

  I asked my broker to cable me daily quotes. It soon became clear from these quotes that certain knowledgeable people were trying to get into this stock in spite of the general state of the market. Few people at that time had the faintest indication that LORILLARD was to make Wall Street history, that it was to shoot up to a most astounding high in a relatively short time, watched by the amazed and gasping financial community.