Idaho may mandate fire-safe cigs

BOISE – Idahoans would be smoking self-extinguishing cigarettes if a proposal by the Idaho Fire Chiefs Association is adopted by legislators in 2008.

Sen. John McGee, R-Caldwell, plans to sponsor the Idaho bill, which would take affect 13 months after adoption.

Such laws are generally supported by the tobacco industry. One industry giant, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., announced in October that all its cigarettes will be fire-safe by the end of 2009.

Nationally, fires caused by cigarettes are the leading cause of home fire fatalities.

The paper on fire-safe cigarettes is less-porous than traditionally used, choking off air to the burning tobacco if no one is inhaling through the cigarette.

“What we’re trying to do is make it safer and make it easier on the wholesalers and distributors,” said Caldwell Fire Chief Mark Wendelsdorf, who is leading the effort for the association.

Currently, 22 states plus Canada have adopted laws requiring the fire-safe cigarettes, with New York among the first to do so in 2000, according to the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes lobbying group, based in Massachusetts.

Oregon has already passed similar legislation, and at least eight other states have proposals pending.

Similar bills have not made it out of the Washington Legislature.

It’s an international trend, too: All cigarettes sold in Europe will soon have to be made with fire-retardant paper that slows burning and extinguishes the cigarette if it is left unattended, European Union officials said in late November.

Firefighting officials in Idaho say a big reason why it’s needed here is that of the 208 people who have died here since 1993 in fires, 30 of them have died in fires started by cigarettes.

For instance, firefighters believe that a 73-year-old Kamiah, Idaho, man died in a trailer fire in 2003 after a lit cigarette sparked a blaze in the home and he failed to escape. A year earlier, a 69-year-old woman in Moscow, Idaho, died – again, the likely result of a lit cigarette that ignited her home.

What’s different about fire-safe cigarettes is their wrapping, which has two or three bands of less-porous paper that cause the burning tobacco to extinguish on its own when a person is no longer inhaling through it.

Some national manufacturing lobbying groups say they would prefer federal legislation, in order not to create a patchwork system of rules that vary from one state to the next.

And according to a January 2007 Connecticut government report, some national cigarette companies have opposed such legislation, arguing that the cigarettes were commercially unfeasible, more toxic than regular smokes and less consumer friendly. The manufacturers also claim that enforcing the mandate too early won’t give retailers time to sell their old, more-dangerous inventory.

“It makes good sense,” said McGee. “If we can save a few lives by making this a standard practice, then that is an accomplishment.”