If you believe everything you read in German newspaper the Hamburger Morgenpost – and who doesn't? – the chain-smoking 94-year-old former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt has stockpiled 38,000 menthol cigarettes at his home.
The estimated figure is based on Social Democrat politician Peer Steinbrück's claim that the former leader bought himself "200 cartons" in preparation for an EU ban on flavoured cigarettes. At about £30 per carton, 200 cartons of Schmidt's favourite Reyno Menthols will have set him back £6,000. And, if he smokes them at his usual rate of 40 a day, it will take him just under three years to run out.
It may just be rhetoric, of course. Steinbrück, who is standing against Angela Merkel for Schmidt's old party in the forthcoming German election, argued in the same speech that Germany needs to curtail the EU's "unbearable regulation frenzy" – and claimed that he has bulk-bought a special French lightbulb for similar reasons.
But when it comes to Schmidt and smoking, anything is possible. Within days of Germany's 2008 public smoking ban coming into force, he was photographed with his wife lighting up at a Hamburg theatre, and investigated by prosecutors as a result. And anti-tobacco campaigners were furious when – three years later, aged 92 – he chain-smoked his way through 13 cigarettes in a TV interview. At that rate, 38,000 will be gone in no time.
