Texas, United States, January 3: In addition to the 17 states already figuring in the list, fire-safe cigarettes have become mandatory in five more states of United States, with effect from the New Year's Day.
According to the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes, stores in Texas, Oklahoma, Delaware, Iowa and Pennsylvania will sell only fire-safe cigarettes now, with the enforcement of the law, and this ruling will be followed by fifteen more states from 2010.
To avert fire- related accidents due to flaming butts, fire-safe cigarettes come wrapped in a thicker paper in two bands along the cigarette length which douses it if not puffed for a while.
However, many people are unhappy due to the unfamiliar taste that it brings along and the fact that it goes off even before one has finished smoking the stick completely.
However, the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes believes that number of cigarette-related fires and deaths may be halved by adhering to the new ruling. Statistics reveal that every year, there are about 800 smoking-related fire casualties.
Fire Marshal Robert Doke from Oklahoma commented, "There has been a rash of smoking materials deaths. A cigarette will fall into overstuffed furniture or mattresses when people fall asleep, or it rolls off an ashtray and on to the carpet, then the possibility for ignition happens.
"This cigarette is supposed to snuff out before it can cause enough heat to start a flame," he added.
A 'Tobacco Outlet Plus' store manager, Julie Alexander quoted that customers response to the new product is not encouraging. "Our customers say they are harder to smoke and the taste isn't the same," she said. Still, she claims that her store located in Iowa has 95 percent of the "fire-safe" cigarettes.
The Coalition's website informs that the 'fire-safe' laws will be enforced this year in Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Colorado, Arizona, Washington, Louisiana, Hawaii and Wisconsin while New York, Vermont, California, Oregon, New Hampshire, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Montana, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Utah, Alaska, Rhode Island and Minnesota and District of Columbia are already following the law.
The states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and South Carolina will implement it next year onwards, while in Texas, storeowners have been granted some buffer time to sell-off their previous stock before restocking fire-safe cigarettes.
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