Chart of the day is.....

.....cigarette consumption in The Americas, according to The Tobacco Atlas website.

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I thought this dataset was pretty interesting when I stumbled upon it last night. The USA at 1196 per capita (60 x 20-packs per person per year, so if you didn't smoke a pack this week, somebody did it for you) surprised me, as did Peru's tiny 129 cigarettes-per-person-per-year consumption. Also, this might explain why Cuban doctors are so good; they have to keep up with their coughing and spluttering citizens. Argentines are big smokers, so that one came as no shock. But Paraguay is a dirt poor nation so what are they doing smoking so much? Must be because Paraguayan ciggies are dirt cheap...I dunno.

China's stimulus program going up in smoke

From this morning's "Canaccord Morning Coffee" daily (thank you reader 'M') comes the inside story of how China is trying to stimulate consumption, healthcare GDP and speed up population turnover.

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Officials in a county in central China have been told to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined, state media reports. The Gong’an county government in Hubei province has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said.

Departments that fail to meet their targets will be fined, the report said. “The regulation will boost the local economy via the cigarette tax,” said Chen Nianzu, a member of the Gong’an cigarette market supervision team, according to the paper. The measure could also be a ploy to aid local cigarette brands such as Huanghelou, which are under severe pressure from competitors in neighbouring Hunan province, according to the paper.