REDUCED IGNITION PROPENSITY [RIP] CIGARETTES

Cigarette caused fires are another example of the tobacco industry's callous "blame the victim" policy, and the nicotine cartel's continued lack of responsibility for the industry's actions.  Other articles excerpted at Fires.

CIGARETTES are the leading cause of fatal fires in the United States.

CIGARETTES are responsible for about 25% of all fire deaths.

CIGARETTE-CAUSED FIRES KILL approximately 1,000 Americans each year.

CIGARETTE-CAUSED FIRES INJURE another 4,000 Americans each year.

CIGARETTE-CAUSED FIRES COST approximately $4 Billion per year in the U.S.
   

More than one third of all cigarette-related fire injuries and deaths occur in innocent children and adults who do not smoke.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION

1987:

A 15 member Technical Study Group, that included representatives from

• R.J. Reynolds,
• Philip Morris,
• American Tobacco Co., and
• Lorillard
   
as well as representatives from the
• National Cancer Institute,
• American Medical Association,
• American Public Health Association,
• U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission,
• International Association of Fire Chiefs,
• American Burn Association, and
• five other national organizations,
 

reported to Congress, as mandated by the Cigarette Safety Act of 1984.

Their report concluded that it was technically and economically feasible to produce cigarettes that have reduced ignition propensity.

In fact, the cigarette manufacturers provided the Technical Study Group with thousands of "experimental" reduced ignition propensity cigarettes that were lit and placed on mock-up and full-scale furniture.

These did not cause ignition in tests conducted by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards.

 Reduced ignition Propensity [RIP] cigarettes are made by using less dense tobacco and less porous paper. <>1993:
As a result of the Fire-Safe Cigarette Act of 1990, the same 15 member group reported to Congress that a fire safety "test method" had been developed for use by a government regulatory agency in order to promulgate a fire-safety performance standard for cigarettes.
  
TODAY:

Despite these two reports, the tobacco industry has successfully lobbied to prevent the passage of federal legislation that would give the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission the authority to regulate cigarettes as a fire hazard and, therefore, ban all cigarettes that are not reduced ignition propensity.

TOBACCO INDUSTRY'S "SOLUTION"

The position of the tobacco industry is that fire safety should be accomplished,

not by changing the way cigarettes burn,

but by making furniture and clothing more fire-resistant.

Aside from shifting the costs from the products causing the fires to the products susceptible to fires, this solution ignores the fact that furniture and mattresses have long life-cycles that make it difficult to replace older, less fire-resistant, products with new ones that are more fire-resistant.
 

A key tactic in the tobacco industry's efforts to defeat meaningful legislation to require fire-safe cigarettes has been to contribute millions of dollars to fire safety organizations throughout the U.S., evidently to buy their silence on the issue, and even their outspoken opposition to proposed legislation.

In 1997, CBS's 60 Minutes aired a report called Up In Smoke. This was about fire-safe cigarettes and a secret research project at Philip Morris to produce fire-safe cigarettes.

This project was code named "Project Hamlet" for the not-so-funny inside corporate joke that the cigarette was "To burn or not to burn".

The cigarette industry fears personal injury suits filed by plaintiffs who have suffered cigarette-caused burns. Therefore, it refuses to acknowledge that a fire-safe cigarette can be manufactured and refuses to change its manufacturing processes to make cigarettes fire-safe.