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Canada Becomes First Country to Require Fire-Safe Cigarettes [04/01-8]
Excerpts from: Canada Becomes First Country to Require Fire-Safe Cigarettes
Talk about Support.Com
The Canadian Parliament passed Bill C-260, which requires all cigarettes sold in Canada to self-extinguish if left un-smoked. The law, based on similar legislation in New York State, will take effect at the end of 2004.
Cigarette-caused fires are the leading cause of fire death in both the U.S. and Canada. Frequently, victims are firefighters or innocent people caught in a home or building where a smoker neglected to extinguish his or her cigarette properly.
The Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs estimates that 14,030 fires between 1995 and 1999 were started by smoking materials. Those fires killed 356 people, injured 1,615, and caused more than $200 million of property damage.
The tobacco cartel has long had the technology to produce fire-safe cigarettes, but has chosen not to. Fire-safe cigarettes result in fewer cigarettes sold as smokers simply re-light cigarettes that go out instead of having to buy new ones.
Fire-safe cigarettes contain bands, or speed bumps, along the length of the cigarette. If smokers don't draw on the cigarette when it burns down to a speed bump, the cigarette self-extinguishes.
New York's fire-safe cigarette law, the world's only other fire-safe cigarette law, goes into effect in July.
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