Like generations of family before him, Steven Bailey grew up with tobacco. The leafy plants thrive in Virginia's clay soil, and one of his earliest memories is of watching his mother work the fields, surrounded by plants as high as her shoulders.

So imbued with the tobacco culture was Bailey that in the 1990s - recently married and expecting his first child - he took a gamble: Despite all the evidence of health risks and the increasing government efforts to curb smoking and regulate manufacturers, he joined his father in taking the giant step of beginning to make their own cigarettes.

Source: baltimoresun.com