Bids for the 1996 Summer Olympics "political instability, potential security problems, air pollution, traffic congestion and the fact that it would have to spend about $3 billion to improve its infrastructure of airports, roads, rail lines and other amenities". Allegations were quick to emerge in the Greek and Australian media that Atlanta had won the Games due to a conspiracy organized by global beverage company Coca-Cola, a longtime sponsor of the Olympic Games headquartered in Atlanta. An Athenian daily newspaper declared the "Olympic flame will not be lit with oil, but with Coca-Cola", while the Athens bid chair said that the city would never again bid
Coca-Cola removed. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using "spent" leaves – the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine. Since then, Coca-Cola uses a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey. In the United States, the Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, the Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells