Kentucky lawmakers debate 'fire-safe' cigarettes after 10 deaths

Debbie Coulter said she supports the right to smoke at her restaurant, but the 52-year-old shudders when she recalls a recent incident in which she fell asleep smoking and her bathrobe caught fire.

"It scares me to death," said Coulter, whose husband helped extinguish the fire. "I could have lost everything - my husband would have had to bury me."

But 10 others at a recent house fire in the town died after, investigators believe, a lit cigarette set a chair aflame. That fire has sparked calls from fire prevention advocates to require all cigarettes sold in the state to be "fire safe," or made to extinguish when dropped or not inhaled for a period.

"We should act quickly to make sure we don't have those kinds of tragedies in the future," said Lorraine Carli, a spokeswoman for the National Fire Protection Association, which is supporting measures in the state House of Representatives and Senate. Her group says lawmakers in at least 19 other states are considering similar legislation.

The state Senate passed a measure that would require the conversion to fire-safe cigarettes on Tuesday, and a similar one has cleared a state House of Representatives committee.

Full Story:http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/16756308.htm

They do that to make them burn faster, causing people to smoke more cigarettes, etc...

If you roll your own using a decent (imported) brand of tobacco, they do go out after a while if you set them down.