I'll make no comments about Monica Lewinski's crack.
An interesting thought about the salt taste is that the different tastes (e.g. salty, sour, etc.) are tasted by different taste buds on different areas of the tongue.
If your smoking or hot liquid drinking has killed off taste buds disproportionately from the non salt areas you would be left with an unbalanced number of salt tasting taste buds.
Try not smoking, drinking hot liquids, eating hot sauces, etc. for at least four days. The lining of the mouth and gut turns over about every three days. So, in four days you should see a normalizing of your tases.
If you don't, see your doctor.
Jim