Feature Article

Cigarettes are the most common ignition source for fatal residential fires, accounting for approximately 29% of the nation's fire deaths.  Every year, fires started by cigarettes are responsible for more than $6 billion in societal costs and direct property damage, approximately 2500 injuries and over 1000 deaths.  More than a hundred fatal victims are innocent bystanders - children and nonsmokers.

Cigarettes are designed to continue to burn when left unattended.  Accelerants are added to cigarettes to maintain continuous burning when not being smoked.  Cigarettes vary in their potential to start fires, depending on cigarette design and content.  The term ‘fire safe' describes a cigarette with reduced propensity for starting a fire when dropped or left unattended.  The technology needed to produce fire safe cigarettes has been available for over a decade.

Small design changes including use of less dense tobacco, less porous paper, a smaller diameter, filter tip, and no added citrates to the paper are key components of a fire-safe cigarette.  Three states – New York, California, and Vermont – have passed legislation requiring fire safe cigarettes.   Last year, Canada also passed a law requiring all cigarettes sold to be fire-safe.  New York's regulations call for all cigarettes sold in the state to be wrapped in the special paper, in which ultra-thin bands work like speed bumps to slow the burning of cigarettes that are not being puffed.  If smokers don't draw on the cigarette when it burns down to a band, the cigarette self-extinguishes.  In the year after New York became the first state in the nation to require fire-safe cigarettes, deaths from fires caused by cigarettes fell by a third.

Tobacco companies are opposed to fire-safe cigarette legislation because the fire-safe cigarettes can be relit, leading to reduced cigarette sales.  Moreover, the cigarette industry fears personal injury suits filed by plaintiffs who have suffered cigarette-caused burns.  Therefore, it refuses to acknowledge that a fire-safe cigarette can be manufactured and refuses to change its manufacturing processes to make cigarettes fire-safe.  However, a recent Harvard University study showed that fire-safe cigarettes do not cost substantially more to make.

Ohio does not yet have a fire-safe cigarette law, but according to The Plain Dealer, Mel House, President of the Ohio Fire Chiefs Association, believes the law is needed here.  Says House, “When you look at the number of fatal fires, you have to believe the fire-safe cigarettes would make a difference.”