Jose Ledo started smoking cigarettes before he fled Cuba in 1961, going through one to two packs a day until he was diagnosed with throat cancer in the 1990s.

“He smoked up until he had a tracheotomy,” said Fort Lauderdale attorney Austin Carr, who represented Ledo’s widow in a wrongful death tobacco case. “Near the end of his days, he was bedridden and he was still asking his wife to give him cigarettes when he had the hole in his throat. She refused.”