Rendell signs bill for safer cigarettes
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
BY KARI ANDREN, For The Patriot-News
Cigarettes sold in Pennsylvania must be “fire-safe” starting Jan. 1 under a bill that Gov. Ed Rendell signed into law Friday.
The law requires cigarettes to be made with layers of slow-burning paper that extinguish unless continuously smoked. It does not apply to cigars.
“Fire-safe cigarettes cut off the burning time before most cigarettes are able to ignite things like furniture or bedding,” said state Rep. Tim Solobay, D-Washington, the bill’s sponsor.
Fourteen states have laws requiring cigarettes to be fire-safe, according to the Coalition for Fire-safe Cigarettes.
Advocates say the term “fire-safe” might be a misnomer. But Solobay, a volunteer firefighter in Canonsburg, Washington County, said the law is a major fire-prevention measure. He estimates that cigarette fires kill about 1,000 people each year and cost Americans more than $6 billion annually.
“Smokers still need to be careful when smoking in their homes,” said state Fire Commissioner Edward Mann. “But the change that this legislation requires is a good step toward preventing hundreds of senseless deaths every year.”
The Senate approved the House-passed measure on June 30 and sent it to the governor.
“The governor supports this legislation because he believes that any step aimed at making us safer from accidental fires is a step in the right direction,” said Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo.
The legislation allows retail outlets a six-month grace period after the law takes effect to sell their inventory of cigarettes without the fire-safe feature.
After July 1, 2009, outlets can be fined up to $500 for the first violation and up to $5,000 for each subsequent offense, up to $25,000 in a month’s time.
Tobacco store owners say consumers are embracing the fire-safe cigarettes.
Muhammad Malik, manager of Choice Cigarette Discount Outlet on Market Street in Harrisburg, said customers like the safeguard of knowing their cigarette will stop burning if they forget to put it out. He said about 30 percent of the cigarettes his store sells are fire-safe.
Solobay predicts that the lives, property and health care costs saved by the law will be “astronomical.”
“I think it’s going to have a remarkable figure attached to it,” he said.
Bill Phelps, spokesman for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris USA, said fire-safe cigarettes are sold to wholesalers at the same price as other cigarettes. The company’s Merit brand cigarettes have been fire-safe and sold nationally since 2000.
Phelps said the only difference in taste some consumers notice is if the cigarette has to be relighted after self-extinguishing.
R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the nation’s second-largest cigarette manufacturer and the maker of Camel and Kool brands, has said all of its cigarettes will be fire-safe by the end of 2009.
Lorraine Carli, spokeswoman for the National Fire Protection Association, which coordinates the Coalition for Fire-safe Cigarettes, said research shows most smokers don’t notice a difference in taste when smoking fire-safe cigarettes.
“You get sporadic complaints from individual smokers,” Carli said. “There’s always a period of adjustment anytime there’s a change … but on the whole, after that initial change, you don’t hear too much.”
Carli said studies done in New York, which has had a fire-safe cigarette law since 2004, have shown no change in buying habits or tax revenue generated from cigarette sales.
KARI ANDREN: 783-5196 or plcaintern@patriot-news.com
ON THE WEB Coalition for Fire-safe Cigarettes: www.firesafecigarettes.org.
Filed under: News | Tagged: cigarettes, fire-safe, Rendell, Solobay
