Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
Unable to change the behavior of careless smokers, California is taking a different tack: Requiring cigarettes to snuff themselves.
A new state law starting today aims to reduce tragic accidents caused by discarded cigarettes that smolder on beds, couches, carpets or dry grass.
California will now require “fire-safe cigarettes designed to extinguish when dropped or left unattended.
The change is not meant to affect a cigarette’s look, taste or cost, but its flame is more likely to suffocate if ignored for a few minutes.
“It’s a no-brainer,” said termed-out Assemblyman Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood. “You save lives and you lose virtually nothing.”
Koretz’s legislation to require such cigarettes passed the Legislature in 2005 but called for a one-year adjustment period.
Retailers can sell their existing inventories before stocking the new product, but “fire-safe” cigarettes should dominate shelves within several months.
The new generation of cigarettes contain two or three tiny paper bands, or “speed bumps,” through which flame is not supposed to burn without periodic puffing.
New York was the first state to require such cigarettes, in June 2004. Vermont, Illinois, New Hampshire and Massachusetts subsequently passed similar laws.
Tobacco firms warn that “fire-safe” cigarettes are not foolproof and can obscure the need for high fabric flammability standards, maintenance of smoke detectors, and adequate fire education.
“Anything that burns, if you handle it carelessly, can cause a fire,” said Bill Phelps, spokesman for Philip Morris USA.
To satisfy California’s new law, cigarettes must pass a laboratory test, which requires that 75 percent of those tested extinguish before burning through 10 layers of standard filter paper.
Critics caution, however, that such tests do not duplicate the wide range of upholstered furniture fabrics used in homes.
In 2005, the first full year that New York required banded cigarettes, the state reported a 10 percent reduction in the number of smoking-related fires and a 26 percent reduction in the number of smoking-related fire deaths compared to annual averages from 2000 through 2003.
But cigarette manufacturers warn against unrealistic expectations.
“Identifying cigarettes as `fire-safe’ carries some risk of instilling a false sense of security in consumers who may erroneously believe that they can carelessly handle cigarettes without concern for starting a fire,” the R.J. Reynolds Co. says in a position paper on its Web site.
Andrew McGuire, executive director of the National Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes, said there is no doubt that banded cigarettes increase safety and reduce fire risk.
“Does it give you a false sense of security to put on a seatbelt? No,” McGuire said. “Will a seatbelt protect you in every crash? No.”
Smoking accidents are the leading cause of death in structure fires nationwide, according to the National Fire Protection Agency.
Smoking-related fires killed 760 people, injured 1,520 and caused $481 million in property damage in 2003, according to the most recent NFPA statistics.
Phelps, of Philip Morris, said banding does not change a cigarette’s tobacco composition but that some smokers contend a cigarette doesn’t taste the same once it is snuffed, then relit.
Audrey Silk, founder of a New York City smokers’ rights group, Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, said banded cigarettes taste differently to her.
“It’s a harsher taste,” she said, unable to elaborate. “When you taste something and it tastes different, how do you put that into words?”
Silk said banded cigarettes can prompt smokers to puff more often, thus smoke faster, for fear their cigarette will die.
Silk suspects there’s an ulterior motive to fire-safe cigarette laws.
“It’s nothing more than the anti-smoker crusade trying to find another way to make it a less desirable product,” she said.