State Bill Calls for ‘Fire-Safe’ Cigarettes

Following the lead of New York lawmakers, who require that all cigarettes sold there be self-extinguishing, a California legislator introduced a bill Monday to allow only “fire-safe” cigarettes to be sold in the state starting in 2006.

Such cigarettes, wrapped in ridged paper, tend to burn out after a couple of minutes if a smoker does not take a drag. Ignition “speed bumps” in the paper make it less likely that a forgotten or discarded cigarette will burn bedding or sofa cushions. Starting last June, all cigarettes sold in New York had to meet self-extinguishing requirements.

“There’s no reason why California and the rest of the country should not benefit from this technology,” said the bill’s author, Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood). “How many more lives have to be lost before other states, including our state, gain access to safer cigarettes?”

Cigarettes, cigars, pipes and other smoking materials are the leading cause of fire deaths in the United States, according to the National Fire Protection Assn., causing an estimated 31,200 structure fires and 830 deaths in 2001.

New York bartender and smoker Gerrard Daly said that the new requirements made his Marlboro cigarettes taste like “sawdust,” and that it was annoying when they had to be relighted when he set them down for a few minutes. But Daly, who caught bed covers on fire with a cigarette five years ago, said he thought California should pass the law.

“As a bartender, I drink,” said Daly, who works at the Dublin House in New York City. “It’s nice to know that if I put the cigarette down, it’ll go out. It’s not going to set my bed on fire.”

But Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Murrieta) said government shouldn’t meddle, and if consumers were clamoring for safer cigarettes, tobacco companies would make them.

“You can only protect people so much from themselves,” he said. “I don’t care whether you’ve got thousands of regulations on these cigarettes. If people don’t want to buy them, they’re not going to buy them. They’ll go to Nevada and get something else.”

Since 1979, lawmakers have been trying to force tobacco companies to make cigarettes that will extinguish themselves. Their efforts include a 1983 bill by then-California state Sen. John Garamendi, a Democrat who is now insurance commissioner.

“The industry came out against the legislation with a vengeance,” said Garamendi, who spoke Monday at a news conference in favor of Koretz’s legislation. “That should not happen again.”

Koretz said his bill had better odds of success given the New York law and a new Harvard School of Public Health study, which concluded that the New York regulations had no effect on cigarette sales.

Fred McConnell, director of communications for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Winston-Salem, N.C., said his company makes self-extinguishing versions of Camel, Doral, Winston and other cigarette brands for New York.

But there’s no such thing as a fire-safe cigarette, he said, and his company would probably oppose Koretz’s bill.

“If the material is flammable and it comes in contact,” said McConnell, “it’s going to melt, scorch or burn.... We won’t support legislation that we don’t believe is effective.”

Jamie Drogin, spokeswoman for Philip Morris USA of Richmond, Va., said her company would support a national standard for cigarette ignition.

“It would ensure that all manufacturers and all products are made to compliance with the same regulations,” she said.

Koretz said that Maryland, Massachusetts and Oregon lawmakers would also introduce bills based on the New York regulations, and that legislators in 10 other states were considering it.

His bill, AB 178, would require that cigarettes sold in California starting in 2006 meet standards set by the American Society of Testing and Materials, as in New York. Retailers would face civil penalties of $10,000 for selling cigarettes that don’t meet the standards after their existing stock of cigarettes is depleted.