Was tobacco/cigarettes rationed in the USA during World War II?
Tobacco and cigarettes weren’t rationed in the USA during WWII, however, most of the US cigarette production went overseas to our soldiers. Cigarettes were available in the states, but sometimes hard to find. It was very difficult to find any particular brand available steadily, so people smoked a variety of brands of cigarettes, basically whatever they could find. A lot of people who normally wouldn’t have gone in for that sort of thing began to “roll their own”. The troops in the field got free cigarettes along with their rations. Garrison troops usually had to buy their cigarettes, I think the price overseas was a nickel a pack, although the Red Cross and the USO usually had some free ones to give out. The tobacco companies sent free cigarettes to patients in military hospitals. This tradition carried on up through the Korean War, but by the time we got to Vietnam, cigarettes were being rationed in-country and the troops sometimes had trouble getting them.
