User:GhostRiver/fsc

A fire safe cigarette, sometimes known as a self-extinguishing cigarette, is a cigarette designed to stop burning when not in active use.

Mechanism

Findings from the National Fire Protection Association found that roughly 18,100 household fires are caused annually in the United States by smoking, and that these fires lead to an average of 590 annual deaths, 1,130 injuries, and $476 million in direct property damage. Because these fires are often started when a smoker is asleep or intoxicated, efforts have been made to create cigarettes that will self-extinguish if not in active use. A fire safe cigarette, as defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is any cigarette with a "reduced propensity for igniting mattresses and upholstered furniture". Originally, the term referred to a cigarette that would self-extinguish within a set amount of time, usually between five and twenty minutes, but after further research revealed that a cigarette could smolder for its entire length without necessarily igniting, these time standards were removed.

Mechanisms for creating fire safe cigarettes often target the burn rate, which is controlled by a number of factors, including cigarette circumference, tobacco packing density, porosity of the cigarette paper, and whether or not there is a filter tip.

Implementation

North America

In the United States, Governor of New York George Pataki signed the first fire safe cigarette legislation in August 2000. The law formally took effect on June 28, 2004, at which point all cigarettes sold in the state of New York were required to self-extinguish. Vermont and California soon followed, with laws modeled after New York's put into effect in May 2006 and January 2007, respectively. Legislation progressed quickly from there, with 21 states passing fire-safe cigarette laws by August 2007, with restrictions going into effect between 2008 and 2009. The final state to implement a fire-safe cigarette law was Wyoming; once their bill went into effect on July 1, 2011, all 50 states and Washington, D.C. required that cigarettes sold met ASTM E2187-09, Standard Test Method for Measuring the Ignition Strength of Cigarettes.

Australia

On September 23, 2008, the Australian government put into effect the Trade Practices (Consumer Product Safety Standard) (Reduced Fire Risk Cigarettes) Regulations 2008, which mandated that, by March 23, 2011, all cigarettes in Australia had to comply with Standards Australia's fire risk standards, regardless of the date of manufacture (for domestic cigarettes) or import.

Response

Customers

In Massachusetts, where fire-safe cigarette laws went into effect in January 2008, many smokers disliked the taste of the new materials, and some experienced migraines after the change.