What’s the #1 cause of residential fire deaths in the U.S. each year?  What is the cause of fire death for between 700 and 900 people each year in the U.S.?  The answers: lighted tobacco products.  Here are a couple of common scenarios:

• Victim fell asleep while smoking in bed or in a stuffed chair late at night
• Unattended cigarette fell out of ashtray and ignited nearby combustible materials
• Children experimenting with cigarettes leave lit cigarette in secluded location starting a fire in the house or in the woods

The good news?   The numbers related to lighted cigarettes are DOWN over the past twenty-five years: number of fires down 75 percent; number of fire deaths down 59 percent; and number of fire injuries down 69 percent.  We can thank more stringent fire-safety standards for the bedding and furniture manufacturing industries and that cigarette consumption has dropped 39 percent for the same period for these downward trends. 

But back to the problem…800 people—smokers and non-smokers alike—died and another 1700 were injured in the 82,400 smoking-related structure fires that took place in 2005.  How do we make these numbers go away?  Fire-safe cigarettes.  (That’s not an oxymoron, please keep reading!)

Fire-safe cigarettes are also getting credit for reducing the numbers of smoking-related fires and their consequences.  Fire-safe cigarettes also hold the greatest promise of bringing all those numbers to ZERO, but only if cigarette manufacturers are forced to manufacture no other kind for sale in the United States.  (In that regard the tobacco companies are a lot like U.S. automobile manufacturers: why do the right thing when you can wait until the government forces you to do it.)  New York was the first state to pass legislation mandating the sale of self-extinguishing cigarettes in 2004; today 14 states have followed New York’s lead and mandated the sale of fire-safe cigarettes.  An additional 21 have passed legislation and are implementing statutes, and 7 state legislatures had bills filed in 2008.  Today 56 percent of the population of the United States lives in a state that has mandated the sale of only fire-safe cigarettes.

How can we all help this effort?  Visit the website for The Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes to learn more and to sign their on-line petition to America’s tobacco companies.  If enough of us act, perhaps they’ll do the right thing without somebody having to pass a law.