MORE CIGARETTE SUPPLIES FOR GERMANS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22890, 9 March 1949, Page 7

MORE CIGARETTE SUPPLIES FOR GERMANS

LONDON. While soldiers and civilians in the British zone of Germany are restricted to 105 cigarettes for men and 80 for women a week, the Germans can now smoke as many as they like. The shelves in German tobacco shops are packed with all sorts of cigarettes, cigars and tobacco, and one cigarette firm seeks to beat the other by giving better quality and more attractive packets. This revolution happened almost overnight. A month ago the shops had nothing to offer but ashtrays and a limited number of cigarettes, which were more like straw than tobacco. British and American cigarettes, so much coveted only a few weeks ago, now threaten to rot in black market stores, for they cost three times the 1 price of German cigarettes, and are of about the same quality. German cigarettes today are produced almost exclusively from imported American and Oriental tobaccos. The imports of tobaccos started after the currency reform in June last year, and the first ships arriving in Hamburg and Bremen were hailed by the tobacco hungry Germans, whose ration in the past years has been only 40 cigarettes every sixweeks.