Forced Smoking Economic Stimulus Program

(Hubei Province, China) The Gong'an County government has instructed its staff to smoke 230,000 packs of locally-produced cigarette brands this and every year. Fines will be assessed for those government departments which fail to meet their targets.

According to Chen Nianzu of the Gong'an Cigarette Market Supervision Team, the taxes on cigarettes will stimulate the economy through increased taxes.

However, the smoking mandate is suspiciously believed to be a scheme to prop up local cigarette brands against intense market pressure from competitors in neighboring Hunan Province.

Frankly, this forced-smoking scheme shouldn't be surprising. When the government controls the economy, incompetence and stupidity are only ameliorated by a massive level of corruption.

Nevertheless, I wonder how the government is planning to verify compliance. The only guaranteed method would be for the staffers to turn in their butts or empty packs to the Smoking Compliance Department, presumably a new set of offices in the bureaucracy.