Citation de Malivriotheque
Most people will be surprised to learn that tobacco was a large part of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. The total value of all goods shipped to Europe from 1947 through 1951 was about $13 billion, about $1 billion of which was tobacco. Nearly a third (!) of all "food-related" funding in the plan went for tobacco. [...] George Seldes [...]: "the hungry people of Europe, wether they like it or not, will have to take almost half as much in tobacco as in bread and other foodstuffs, because there is an unsaleable surplus of tobacco in the US." Seldes reported speculations that American tobacco interests were hoping to use the plan to spread the demand for American-style cigarettes into Europe. Tobacco was supposed to be part of an effort to halt the expansion of communism. [...] [Virginia Congressman John W. Flannagan in 1948:] tobacco gifts to Europe "will aid in eliminating or retading the spread of ideologies antagonistic to democracy and to world peace."
