| Kippreport.com

Chinese ordered to smoke up

May 4, 2009 3:13 by Dana El Baltaji

And today, we love it even more. According to London-based daily The Telegraph, Chinese officials in the Hubei province (central China) have ordered government officials and school teachers to smoke a set number of locally made cigarettes in a bid to improve the economy.

“The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax,” said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong’an cigarette market supervision team.

Officials have been instructed to smoke 230,000 packs of cigarettes per year.

There’s more.

Apparently, the authorities suspected that a teacher was smoking a rival brand and raided a school at 3pm. The “cigarette marketing consolidate team” sifted through ashtrays and found three “non-compliant” cigarette butts. The school was spared a fine, but it was publicly criticized.

We love that the Chinese government feels it is perfectly justified in imposing a “cigarette usage rule” and punishing people for smoking “non-compliant” cigarettes.

We’d smoke all the “compliant” cigarettes in the world to have listened in on the brainstorming session that led to this brilliant law.