A Chinese county has ordered officials to smoke nearly a quarter of a million packs of cigarettes every year in the hopes of raising tax revenues.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8033101.stm well what can I say

Interestingly some areas of China used to have the highest amount of 'heavy smokers' smoking mostly unfiltered strong ciggies and still had the lowest incidence of lung cancer and long life expectancy. They also did things like putting blocks of salt in their tea to drink...a local habit, and this wasn't causing them to have high blood pressure like they try to tell you it does in the UK.

It would be interesting to know what chemicals they had in.

Western style cigarettes like Marlborough are full of oxidising agents such as Potassium Nitrate. These stop the fag from going out; it's how they make slow-burn fuses for bombs. It causes various toxic organic and inorganic nitrogen compounds to be present in the smoke. These include Hydrogen Cyanide, Nitrogen Oxides and Ammonia. It also gives a very high burn temperature, which leads to more reactive agents being present in the smoke.

I've tended to smoke rolling tobacco, or the very occasional pipe or cigar. You can tell instantly from the smell that the smoke contains different chemicals.

I've often found it hard to believe the supposedly fatal nature of things like 'salt intake' when I look around me, and look at how often the danger of a pint of Guinness or glass of red wine changes

I liked the info that they're discouraging health professionals from smoking, but encouraging officials!?!?!

Mind you, they also can't tolerate milk products or process alcohol in the same way we do.
Doesn't mean the advice to not smoke and watch your sodium intake is invalid.

HCN, NO and Ammonia will be present in the smoke regardless of the use of KNO3. The smell difference is usually due to the differing types of tobacco types in the cig/ roll your own and the moisture level of the tobacco.

So... this means healthy fags are a pipe dream?

When I was given a pipe by some friends for my birthday last year, I read up on smoking pipes. About 50% of what I read seemed to argue that the occasional puff wasn't necessarily bad as it could relieve stress which can be bad in itself...100% of what I read advised again regular smoking of any kind though.

puntastic.
Tobacco use has an affect on the human body there is no such thing as a healthy fag and ther will probably never will be.
Its always best not to start.

I'm always baffled by people who do (adults I mean)

I recognise the health concerns, but puffing on my pipe is nice every one or two months...
What I can't get my head around is how people become addicted to it...

I just don't see why you'd even risk addiction - where's the fun or benefit (in a sense) you get from say, alcohol, or even illegal drugs? Just seems pointless, damaging and costly to me

Nothing wrong with smoking, or salt for that matter - it is being sat on your backside behind a desk for 8 hours a day that does it.