Fire-Safe Cigarettes

Fire-safe cigarettes self-extinguish when the smoker takes extended breaks between puffs. Fox Fort Wayne News was told that the fire-safe cigarettes dont taste, look, smell, or cost any different than regular cigarettes. Some differences that might be noticed are that cigarettes will burn out quicker, and the smoker might have to take a deeper breath when inhaling to keep the cigarette burning. Linda Bragg works at Discount Tobacco and believes “The state is doing a real good thing here by mandating the change. Even if it just saves 2 lives, those are lives worth the change.” The underlying reason for the new law is to prevent fires. Fort Wayne Fire officials say they have seen their fair share of fires caused by cigarettes. Assistant Fire Chief, Jim Murua hopes “this will be another tool that will extinguish fires, so we dont have more loss of life.” Some are skeptical about the change. Kieth smokes and says “who wants to buy a cigarette that keeps going out. I don’t know who created this, but they are wasting their time.” The new cigarettes will have less porous paper, and an additional band that will make it harder for oxygen to flow through the cigarette. This will cause it to burn slower and extinguish faster. The change is not in the filter or the tobacco, its in the paper. Murua says “You will have to pull a little harder to get through those bands or puff a little more often or they will self-extinguish.” You can tell the difference between the old and new cigarette packaging by three small letters printed above the bar code, F.S.C., which stands for Fire-Safe Compliant. Linda says she cant tell a difference. “I personally smoke cigarettes that are switched over to fire safety compliance that we have here in the store. There is not a difference in taste!” Even after July 1st, stores that sell cigarettes are legally allowed to continue selling regular cigarettes until their stock is gone. After that, they must switch over to Fire-safe cigarettes. Forty-eight states, including the District of Columbia have passed fire-safe cigarette laws.