Chinese government officials want to boost economy with more cigarette smoking
Officials in Hubei province in the Glorious People’s Republic of China have hit on a great way to stimulate the economy: make people smoke more. Government employees in the province have been ordered to meet “cigarette quotas,” smoking their way through hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of domestically produced cigarettes. They’re also subject to surprise inspections to make sure they’re living up to their quotas; one middle-school teacher was almost fined for daring to smoke a foreign brand. The increased smoking will funnel lots of money to China’s cigarette manufacturers and to the government in taxes, and it might eventually help solve China’s overpopulation problem.