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Cigarette Fire Safety Bill
Introduced in Oregon Legislature
In an effort to reduce fire deaths in
Oregon, state lawmakers were asked to consider
SB 738 which would
set fire safety standards for cigarettes sold in Oregon. The proposed
law followed the adoption of similar
standards by the State of New York
and Canada. The bill did not pass.
Cigarettes are the leading cause of fatal
fires in the United States, killing nearly 900 people and injuring
2,500-3,000 annually. Unlike pipes or cigars, which go out if not puffed on,
commercially mass-produced cigarettes continue to burn once lit;
igniting beddings, upholstery, and other flammable materials. In 2001,
"smokers' carelessness" resulted in 31,200 fires and 830 deaths - 60 of
them children.
Tim Birr, a retired Tualatin Valley Fire
and Rescue Division Chief who advocated for cigarette fire safety
legislation in the 1980s, says that the term “smoker’s carelessness” is
a euphemism that minimizes the problem and masks the reality of
cigarette-caused fires. “Many of these fires involve the elderly or
disabled,” says Birr, “who are less likely to detect a fire, be awakened
by a smoke alarm, alert others, or escape themselves. In multifamily
housing, like apartments, that’s a frightening scenario.”
The
Oregon Legislature has considered
cigarette fire safety on previous
occasions, beginning in 1979 when Oregon
was the first state to consider such
legislation. Throughout the early 1980s,
a loose-knit coalition of public health
and fire service interests tried
repeatedly to get such legislation
through the Oregon house and senate, but
failed when industry representatives
told legislators is was not technically
feasible to produce a fire-safe
cigarette.
“A lot has changed
in the last 20 years,” notes Tom Whelan,
one of the bill’s chief advocates.
Whelan, a former state representative
and retired Salem fire captain, notes
that the extensive tobacco litigation of
the last decade placed a lot of internal
tobacco industry documents and memoranda
on the public record through the civil
discovery process.
“We now know,”
says Whelan, “that as early as 1982 the
Tobacco Institute was being advised by
its PR people that claiming ‘can‘t be
done‘ was no longer ‘politically viable‘
since reduced ignition propensity
cigarettes were then being sold in
Europe.” These disclosures, coupled with
continuing research by the federal
government, led to
New York State successfully passing
safer-cigarette legislation, with
the law taking effect last June 28.
More recently, on
January 24, 2005, the
Harvard School of Public Health
released a report on reduced ignition
propensity cigarettes and New York’s
experience to date.* Among findings in
the research:
- Testing of
five major cigarette brands in New
York, Massachusetts, and California
found that the New York versions
were less likely to burn to the end.
- Reduced
ignition propensity (RIP) in the New
York cigarettes was apparently
achieved by modifying cigarette
paper.
- Reviewing
cigarette tax data for the last six
months, the RIP cigarettes appeared
to have no effect on sales of
cigarettes in New York, indicating
consumer acceptance.
The Harvard report
concludes that, based on the New York
experience, prior industry objections to
“fire-safer” cigarettes are unfounded,
and there is no reason cigarette
manufacturers shouldn’t sell such
cigarettes nationwide.
The bill being
proposed in Oregon seeks to replicate
the standards developed and used by the
State of New York, giving cigarette
manufacturers another market in which to
sell the safer product.. Similar bills
have been introduced in recent weeks in
Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire,
New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
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National
Fire-Safe Cigarette Website
Legislative
Fact Sheet
Fire-Safe
Cigarette
Backgrounder
Links:
Harvard School
of Public Health
Press Release on
Fire-Safe Cigarettes
Harvard Study: The Effect
of the New York State
Cigarette Fire Safety
Standard on Ignition
Propensity, Smoke Toxicity
and the Consumer Market
NFPA Fact Sheet on
Smoking Materials
The Case for Fire Safe Cigarettes Made Through Industry
Documents
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