Reduced Ignition Propensity Cigarettes

EXCERPTS from:  February 16, 1999, The Baltimore Sun
full article at http://www.tobacco.org

Tobacco industry tied to firefighters
Donations seen as way to weaken support for fire-safe
cigarettes
By Scott Shane,  Sun Staff

After a cigarette ignited a fatal fire that roared through a
Baltimore high-rise Feb. 5, Maryland Fire Marshal Rocco J.
Gabriele cautioned smokers, noting that careless smoking is
the leading cause of fire deaths.

But Gabriele did not mention one reason smoking remains such
a fire hazard: For 20 years, the tobacco industry has
defeated attempts to require that cigarettes be redesigned
to make them less likely to start fires. The industry's main
tactic has been to weaken support for such regulation by
courting key fire officials such as Gabriele with hefty
donations.

The National Association of State Fire Marshals, which
Gabriele leads as president, receives $50,000 a year from
tobacco giant Philip Morris for "administrative expenses."
Several years ago, the tobacco industry gave the association
$500,000, which was used to buy smoke detectors for free
distribution.

The fire marshal association's Washington office is run by
longtime tobacco lobbyist Peter G. Sparber, who represented
R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. in Congress until recently on the
issue of fire-safe cigarettes.

Sparber, who said he serves the association for no fee, has
also lobbied on behalf of the National Volunteer Fire
Council, a coalition of volunteer fire companies that has
received tobacco funding.

Advocates of fire-safety standards for cigarettes find the
tobacco-firefighter alliances preposterous.

"It's like the police department taking money from the Mafia
to support crime control," said Andrew McGuire, a San
Francisco fire-safety advocate who has served on two federal
study groups on fire-safe cigarettes. "I think the tobacco
industry recognized early on the potential harm the fire
service could cause them."

Glenn E. Schneider, spokesman for the anti- tobacco
coalition Smoke Free Maryland, said the cigarette companies
have often used financial largess to neutralize potential
critics.

"Is no organization sacred?" Schneider said. "It's
reprehensible that they [cigarette manufacturers] are trying
to get into bed with the firefighting industry on this
issue."

Rep. Joe Moakley, a Massachusetts Democrat who has fought
for years for fire-safe-cigarette standards, said the
industry is capable of producing such a product, either by
making cigarettes self-extinguishing or changing their
composition and dimensions. The holdup has been not
technology but politics, he said.

"It's taken so long because tobacco has a great lobbying
force in the Congress," said Moakley, who began pushing for
legislation after a cigarette-caused fire in his district in
1979 killed seven members of one family. "If the industry
hadn't opposed it, it would have passed long ago."

Moakley said the tobacco companies' generosity to
firefighters had effectively blunted their support for
standards. "They bought smoke detectors and fire alarms,
they financed Little Leagues, and they tried to seem like
the good guys," he said.

"Quite frankly, I don't care where we get the money,"
Gabriele said. "I'm not proud. I'll take money from anyone
who wants to give it to us."

Sparber said any suggestion that the tobacco industry has
influenced fire-protection groups with their financial
support was "ridiculous." Most of the industry donations
supported fire-prevention efforts, he said.

Michael W. Minieri II, executive director of the fire
marshals' association, said that by policy, the group
accepts corporate contributions but does not permit donors
to influence its positions. He said the association has
opposed fire-safe-cigarette standards in the past only
because they were not effective.

"We are strongly in favor of effective standards," Minieri
said. "We oppose standards that aren't effective."

Philip Morris spokeswoman Mary Carnovale said the biggest
U.S. cigarette manufacturer has aided fire-safety groups not
to influence them, but because the company recognizes that
cigarettes cause fires.

She said Philip Morris is continuing research on making
cigarettes safer. But she added: "No standard for cigarettes
and fire safety can replace the need for the exercise of
good common sense and individual responsibility."

Internal tobacco industry documents unveiled in recent
lawsuits show the strategy of blocking fire-safety standards
for cigarettes by wooing firefighting organizations was
devised shortly after Moakley began pushing for regulation.

The Tobacco Institute's 1984 report to its board of
directors proudly described how the institute had turned
around firefighters' backing for federal standards.

"Before we began [in 1982], the fire service was slowly
uniting against us," the report said. "Uniformed
firefighters were appearing at legislative hearings, writing
articles and giving interviews, demanding cigarette
regulation.

"By this past summer, several of the largest fire service
groups were working closely with us legislatively and on the
prevention of all kinds of accidental fires. We have been
asked to serve on their boards. We are asked to give
speeches and we are invited into the homes and private
meetings of America's fire service," the report said.

"We are not out of the woods," the report said, noting that
a federal study of standards was then just beginning. "But
we face the rest of it with the fire fighters, and not with
them against us."

That strategy has remained effective for 15 years. Hearing a
mixed message on the issue from firefighting organizations,
Congress has never set standards. Instead, it has ordered
two studies and directed the National Institute of Standards
and Technology to develop tests to measure the fire hazard
from particular cigarettes, which it did in 1993.

Richard J. Gann, chief of the federal agency's fire science
program, said that the 14 leading cigarette brands flunked
the two tests his agency helped devise. But he said certain
lesser-known brands were far less likely to cause fires,
suggesting that safer cigarettes are feasible.

"If an effective standard is put in place and the cigarette
industry meets it, you'll see the result very quickly in a
reduction of fires and fire deaths," Gann said.

Moakley said tobacco lobbyists have long diverted attention
from cigarettes to furniture, mattresses and other products
that dropped cigarettes ignite.

"Every time I get close, they say, 'Let's make furniture
fireproof,' " Moakley said. "They want to fireproof the
world so that people can drop their cigarettes everywhere."

Moakley said he plans to file a new bill March 11 that would
give the Consumer Product Safety Commission the power to set
fire-safety standards for cigarettes. This time, he thinks,
it might pass.

Updated July 23, 1999