Fire Safer Cigs: UK Fire-safe cigarettes

Press Release – Public Health Concerns Raised Over ‘Fire Safe’ Cigarettes

August 4, 2009

Public health concerns are growing against the support given to ‘fire safe’ cigarettes from fire brigade chiefs, the Scottish government1 and RIP coalition2.

Whilst any campaign to reduce the number of fatal fires within the country is commendable, the damage to public health with the use of harmful substances, including increased toxicity levels and chemical coatings, appears to have gone unnoticed.

Freedom2Choose are warning that Reduced Ignition Propensity Cigarettes (RIPs) have not yet been tested on humans, and whilst perfectly acceptable from a fire-safety point of view, their harmful effects and modifications have yet to be tested by the scientific community with regard to public health.3

Andy Davis, chairman of Freedom2Choose states, “It appears that Scotland wants to be the first in the UK to introduce these potentially lethal cigarettes and Nationalist MSP Stewart Maxwell has already lodged a motion for their introduction.? Has he no regard for the health of Scottish citizens?”

Freedom2Choose has exposed the devious methods conducted for the Fire Research Report (8) which ensured that the intended results for the RIP coalition were ‘proved’.4

“Certain materials which would not smoulder or burn were discarded and ignored in the study, and lit cigarettes were placed between layers of material to maximize damage.? This would never happen in normal life,” claims Andy Davis.? “Even if these modified papers are an effective way of fire-prevention, they are potentially dangerous to consumers and should not have even been considered until rigorous scientific tests have proved their safety.”

Spokesperson: Dave Atherton: 0208 988 3038
References:
1?Support for ‘fire safe’ cigarettes
2?RIP Coalition
3?Science and Public Health duped on RIP Cigarettes
4?Fire Research Report (8)

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Plan to ban ‘traditional’ cigarettes in drive to cut house fires

July 31, 2007
HAMISH MACDONELL,? SCOTTISH POLITICAL EDITOR (hmacdonell@scotsman.com)

TRADITIONAL cigarettes which stay alight when they are not being smoked could be banned as part of a European effort to reduce house fires.

The European Commission is considering plans to force manufacturers to produce cigarettes that go out when left alone.

A total of 30 of the 76 fatal house fires in Scotland in 2004 were caused by tobacco products and more than 2,000 people are killed and a further 7,300 injured in house fires in Europe caused by cigarettes every year.

The move has been championed by Irene Oldfather, the Labour MSP, who has tabled a motion at the Scottish Parliament supporting the proposals.

But pro-smoking groups said any change should not unduly affect smokers’ enjoyment of their habit.

Canada and several US states, including New York, Illinois, California and New Hampshire, have brought in restrictions forcing tobacco manufacturers to change their cigarettes.

Cigarettes sold in these areas have to go out if they are not smoked and there is now a move within Europe to emulate this.

A spokeswoman for the European Commission said that firm plans would be published by the end of the year, while Ms Oldfather’s motion claimed that the Commission had set a target of 2009-10 for the change.

Ms Oldfather said the initiative was designed to save lives and was not another move against the rights of smokers.

She said: “This is about reducing fire hazards, particularly for vulnerable and elderly people.

“People may be put at risk who are not smokers but who live in apartments and flats near to smokers.

“This is not unfair to smokers who have the right to smoke as a personal choice, this is making it safer for them and for others.”

But Neil Raffety, of the smokers’ group Forest, said: “Smokers should have a choice.

“If any change to the product makes it less palatable, that is not very fair to smokers. Smokers need to be responsible and I am sure that most smokers would be sympathetic with the aims of these, so-called safer cigarettes but, at the same time, it should not be at the cost of the product the smoker wants to buy.”

The Westminster government has been in the lead on this issue, asking the European Commission – supported by Sweden – to look into it.

Baroness Andrews, a junior minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government, told the House of Lords last week that she expected progress to be made on this issue at the next meeting of the general product committee in September.

Chris Ogden, director of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, said that cigarette producers were willing to go along with any plans which would make cigarettes safer, but only if the right solution could be found.

He said that it would be wrong for Europe to simply adopt the American restrictions, and claimed that the North Americans based their restrictions on the length of time a cigarette continued to burn while sitting on a pile of paper, and did not test whether a lit cigarette would set fire to a sofa or a bed.

He also pointed out that the easiest way for cigarette manufacturers to produce cigarettes which go out when not being smoked was to use thicker paper.

However, if they did that, Mr Odgen said it would change the amount of nicotine and tar inhaled by the smoker – levels controlled by European legislation – making the whole process very complicated. The cost of these changes could also be passed on to the consumer.

Mr Ogden added: “Any change in production methods will incur costs, that goes without saying. We all want the product to be as safe as possible, but it has to be based on a realistic standard, not something imposed on us.”

ONE SMOKER’S VERDICT: ‘HARSHER, DRIER AND LESS PLEASURABLE’
I STEPPED away from my table at the Duke of Gloucester Pub in downtown Toronto for maybe two minutes, certainly no more.

When I returned, the world as I had once known it was obliterated.

My fag had petered out in the ashtray without a fight.

No blaze of glory for my Peter Jackson Extra Light King Size. My cigarette had simply died. The culprit was not a sudden downpour. It was far more tragic. My fag had committed suicide.

Canada introduced self-extinguishing cigarettes in 2005 with nary a whimper.

One day you could leave your cigarette burning in an ashtray, the next any distraction could put the thing on life support.

As the EU prepares to introduce self-extinguishing cigarettes, puffers beware: that fag will no longer stand by you burning like an Olympic torch as you race to the loo, or nip over to chat up the pretty patron across the bar. Instead, it will be DOA.

And it won’t even taste the same. Cigarettes with the additional fire-proof chemicals have seemed to me harsher, drier and less pleasurable.

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New ‘fire-safe’ cigarettes will put themselves out
Old-style brands will be banned by 2009 in a bid to prevent blaze deaths

May 27, 2007
Denis Campbell, health correspondent

Cigarettes that stop burning within two minutes of being put down are to replace conventional brands in an attempt to reduce the number of casualties from fires started by smouldering butts.

The European Commission is to ban traditional cigarettes by 2009-10, forcing smokers to buy ‘fire-safe’ cigarettes that need constant drags to keep them alight.

Arlene McCarthy, a British Labour member of the European Parliament and chair of its consumer protection committee, said: ‘It’s very good news. It will save lives. At the moment some people come home, have had a few drinks, fall asleep on the sofa with a cigarette in their hand, it falls on to flammable material and the next thing you know you’ve got a fire. Fire-safe cigarettes greatly reduce the risk of that happening.’

McCarthy admitted it may prove unpopular among Britain’s 10 million smokers. ‘Some smokers have said that they felt it would interfere with their smoking experience, but as long as you are smoking the cigarette and drawing on it, it will stay lit. The sensation for the smoker will be no different. But the safety effect will be massive.’

The commission’s general product safety committee will next month discuss evidence submitted by 17 of the 27 member states showing that about 2,000 people across Europe are killed every year in house fires caused by cigarettes and a further 7,500 injured. The committee is expected to then vote at its next meeting, in November, to ask CEN, the body which regulates the quality of all consumer products sold in Europe, to devise an EU-wide standard for ‘fire-safer’ cigarettes. Setting a safety standard for any product usually takes two to three years, but the commission hopes to introduce fire-safe cigarettes sooner, by adopting the same standard that applies in New York State, the first place to legislate on fire-safe cigarettes. Canada and eight other American states have followed suit, and Australia is considering passing a similar law.

The commission has rejected claims from the tobacco industry that the new cigarettes will have little impact on fire-related deaths and injuries and that they will prove more toxic to smokers. Evidence from North America suggests that changing the composition of cigarettes will add half of 1 per cent to their cost – 2p or 3p on a packet of 20.

Once the new rules come in, cigarettes imported into the EU will also have to have several concentric bands, or ‘speed bumps’, in the tobacco paper to restrict oxygen access to the cigarette’s burning end. But there is concern that Britain’s high level of tobacco smuggling – up to 13bn of the estimated 70bn cigarettes sold come from that route – may rise further as some smokers fight to continue enjoying conventional cigarettes.

Angela Smith, the Fire Minister at the Department of Communities and Local Government, has lobbied the commission on the UK’s behalf to make the change. Commission officials have paid particular attention to evidence from doctors specialising in treating burns victims about the often horrifying injuries suffered by people caught in fires.