Fire-Safe Cigarette Goal Within Reach: NFPA
In a Jan. 3 blog posting titled "This could be the year," NFPA President/CEO James M. Shannon writes that advocates of fire-safe cigarette laws may achieve their goal of having laws on the books of all 50 states this year. If not, "we will come very close to it," Shannon writes.
Beginning Jan. 1, all cigarettes sold in Massachusetts, Maine, and Illinois were required to be "fire-safe." Eight states representing 27 percent of the U.S. population have fire-safe cigarette laws in effect, but governors in a total of 22 states have signed such laws, according to Shannon's post, which mentioned R.J. Reynolds' recent announcement that its brands will meet fire-safe cigarette safety standards by the end of 2009.
"Over the past year, we've made huge strides in our effort to save lives and prevent injuries from cigarette-ignited fires," Shannon writes at http://nfpa.typepad.com/firesafecigarettes/. "And in the coming months, we'll be keeping the pressure on the other cigarette manufacturers, and working with the 28 states who've not yet acted on fire-safe cigarette legislation. I think 2008 could be the year that, even if we don't reach our goal of getting standards for fire-safe cigarettes required in every state, we will come very close to it."
For more information, visit www.firesafecigarettes.org.