Yes, I’m just reposting Boing Boing content, but this is so ridiculous I just had to…

Government employees have been ordered to smoke 230 000 packs of locally produced cigarettes in order to boost the economy through taxation.

Um, what?  We want you people to smoke these cigarettes, NOW!   Get started, your lungs won’t blacken themselves.  The article mentions that about 1 million people die each year from smoking related illnesses in China, placing this effort squarely in the “short term solution” category.  Not sure if they have done any rudimentary math on the inevitable increased health care costs of this strategy, but it seems like a net loss kind of a thing to me.  They have actually imposed a smoking quota to make sure people smoke enough of these things.

Absolutely bat-shit insane.