‘Fire-Safe’ Tobacco Mandates Multiply

The tobacco industry is under growing pressure to offer “fire-safe” cigarettes nationally, as more states join California in mandating the product.

Safety experts say that such cigarettes, which burn out more quickly if a smoker does not take a drag, dramatically reduce the risk of house fires.

But the industry continues to fight efforts by other states to require the product, even though tobacco makers acknowledge that fire-safe smokes don’t cost more to produce and don’t reduce cigarette consumption.

Some lawmakers say the industry might fear that giving ground on fire-safe legislation might leave it vulnerable on a more threatening issue: banning smoking in restaurants and other public places.

Political support for state laws requiring fire-safe cigarettes appears to be growing. In recent weeks, New Hampshire and Illinois joined California, New York and Vermont in passing legislation requiring cigarettes sold in their states to burn out faster than conventional versions.

By January 2008, when Illinois’ law takes effect, nearly a quarter of all Americans will live in states mandating fire-safe sales. California’s law, passed last year, takes effect Jan. 1, 2007.

These laws are needed, backers say, because smoldering cigarettes remain the nation’s leading cause of lethal home fires, killing 700 to 900 people annually, said James Shannon, president of the National Fire Protection Assn.

Burning cigarettes also cause $300 million in property damage yearly, he said. The fires often start when cigarettes roll off ashtrays onto sofa cushions or mattresses.

The tobacco companies deny those safety claims and say they fear that state laws will create a hodgepodge of standards.

There is “no evidence these laws will significantly reduce fires

David Adelman, a tobacco industry analyst at Morgan Stanley, called the idea that the product would save lives “ridiculous.”

“It’s a burning piece of paper,” he said. “If you want a fire-safe cigarette, don’t light it.”

Shannon acknowledged that fire-safe cigarettes can start fires but said that “no one can deny that they are safer.” If adopted nationwide, he added, they “will eliminate three-fourths of the cigarette fires.”

In New York, where all cigarettes sold have been self-extinguishing since 2004, “preliminary indications are that it has reduced deaths,” said Eamon Moynihan, a spokesman with the New York State Office of Fire Prevention and Control.

Self-extinguishing cigarettes are wrapped in thin bands of paper. These ridges act as speed bumps to slow the burning and cause an unattended cigarette to die out.

Spokesmen for the cigarette companies said they preferred a national standard on self-extinguishing cigarettes if it superseded tougher state laws.

“A patchwork of state laws would be impossible for us to comply with,” said Ronald Milstein, general counsel for Lorillard Tobacco Co., the maker of Kent cigarettes.

R.J. Reynolds’ Howard fears that other states could pass even more stringent standards. “We have no protection from that,” he said.

But federal legislation requiring self-extinguishing cigarettes has stalled or died in Congress amid staunch industry lobbying. And state laws passed so far are generally similar, allowing tobacco companies to sell the same fire-safe product in each state.

Recent state victories followed a period of years in which the industry snuffed out a wave of bills by cultivating alliances with fire safety groups. Cigarette makers distributed grants and equipment and provided lobbying support to local fire departments and national prevention groups.

Those organizations often kept silent on bills mandating fire-safe cigarettes. Now the major fire safety groups back the state cigarette rules.

The tobacco companies could voluntarily adopt a federal standard similar to New York’s. Instead, they have focused their muscle on state lawmakers -- sometimes in surprising ways.

The companies initially opposed the New Hampshire law, according to Pamela Walsh, a spokeswoman for Gov. John Lynch, but backed off before it passed, lobbying hard instead against a restaurant smoking ban. That measure failed by one vote.

Morgan Stanley’s Adelman said the industry fights proposed smoking bans harder than fire-safe rules because the bans, along with excise tax hikes, have cut cigarette consumption.

In Pennsylvania, state Rep. Mark Cohen said the industry had neither actively supported nor opposed his fire-safe bill but worked against an indoor smoking ban that died this week.

In Massachusetts, which has a workplace smoking ban, R.J. Reynolds opposes a pending fire-safe bill, Howard said.

Such legislation, Shannon said, will push the tobacco companies “much closer to the tipping point where they will determine it to be in their interest” to produce only self-extinguishing cigarettes. That decision “is probably tied up with their analysis of what it costs to produce and distribute two different kinds of cigarettes.”