LB 584 requires smokes to be self-extinguishing
Martha Stoddard
Omaha World-Herald
Copyright 2007 The Omaha World-Herald Company
LINCOLN, Neb. — Jon Kroger had figured cigarettes might kill his dad.
But he expected his father’s years of smoking would lead to a heart attack or cancer. He didn’t expect that a cigarette would claim his father’s life by starting a fire.
Dave A. Kroger, the fourthgeneration owner of a Seward, Neb., shoe store, died two years ago from burns and smoke inhalation. He was 65.
The elder Kroger was one of three people killed in Nebraska that year by fires caused by smoking materials -- cigarettes, cigars or pipes.
While the Legislature has spent hours this year debating a bill intended to save lives by banning smoking in public buildings and workplaces, another bill aimed at preventing cigarette deaths remains stuck in the Health and Human Services Committee.
Legislative Bill 584 would require all cigarettes sold in Nebraska to extinguish themselves when not being actively smoked.
Jon Kroger said the bill is a good idea.
“First, there are regulations in place in some areas for making other products safe, such as helmet laws, seat belt laws, and (food and drug) laws -- and making cigarettes safer would seem to fall in line,” he said. “Second, a new obstacle for the pusher is all right by me.”
Twelve states and Canada have laws requiring such “reduced-ignition” cigarettes. The most common type of reducedignition cigarette has two or three bands of thicker paper that act as speed bumps that cause the cigarette to stop burning if the smoker drops it or puts it down. New York was first with a law that took effect in June 2004. Iowa became the latest to pass a bill, with the Senate giving final approval to the measure Tuesday. If signed by the governor, the law would take effect in 2009.
The number of such laws has more than doubled since the national Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes launched a state-bystate campaign last year.
The National Fire Protection Association is coordinating the coalition, whose members include a long list of firefighter groups and consumer, safety and health advocates.
State Sen. Don Preister of Omaha, who introduced LB 584, said he is disappointed that Nebraska is unlikely to become one of the states requiring self-extinguishing cigarettes this year.
“It wouldn’t increase the price to the customer, yet the lives that would be saved, the property, the insurance premiums. I see it as a savings to us as a society,” he said.
In Nebraska, as is true across the nation, smoking-related fires account for a disproportionate share of fire deaths and injuries.
Smoking-related fires were only 3.4 percent of all Nebraska fires from 2000 through 2005, according to the State Fire Marshal’s office.
But those smoking-related fires accounted for 15 percent of fire deaths in those years and 5 percent of the injuries. They killed 15 people and injured 28, including eight firefighters.
Across the United States, cigarette-ignited fires kill 700 to 900 people every year and injure thousands more. One in four victims is someone other than the smoker, according to the national coalition.
Representatives from the Lincoln Fire Department, the Nebraska State Volunteer Firefighters Association, the burn unit at Lincoln’s St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center and GASP, the Group to Alleviate Smoking Pollution, all testified in support.
No opponents spoke at the public hearing on LB 584 earlier this year.
But the major tobacco manufacturers have opposed state mandates for reduced-ignition cigarettes.
In letters to the national coalition last year, the manufacturers cited concerns about the potential for a patchwork of state laws and about whether smokers would buy the new cigarettes.
They also said careless behavior is the major cause of cigarette fires.
“There is no such thing as a ‘fire-safe’ cigarette,” a Lorillard Tobacco Co. executive wrote. “Any standard that leads smokers to believe that a lit cigarette is ‘fire safe’ may result in a reversal of the substantial progress that has been made over the last two decades.”
Efforts to pass a national standard for reduced-ignition cigarettes began in 1974 but repeatedly have been defeated.
Sen. Joel Johnson of Kearney, chairman of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, said committee members wanted to wait and see on the issue.
He said they found it puzzling that supporters of the bill testified that cigarette makers have had the technology to make self-extinguishing cigarettes for more than 40 years yet are not doing so until mandated.
“Why hasn’t the industry implemented it? Is there something that we don’t know?” Johnson asked, adding, “There’s still the potential for acting on (LB 584) next year.”