FIRE-SAFE CIGARETTES HIT A WALL

Big Tobacco: The Industry Has Used Its Wealth To Avoid Regulation, Papers
Show.

Many people know that smoking is considered the nation's leading
preventable cause of death. But it is less widely known that cigarettes
also are the leading cause of fatal fires, responsible for about
one-quarter of all U.S. fire deaths. Often, the 1,000 victims each year are
not just smokers who drifted off to sleep but children and other bystanders.

Yet many scientists and fire officials say these deaths are often avoidable
because small design changes in cigarettes would make them less prone to
start fires.

Indeed, over the past quarter-century, many bills have been introduced in
state legislatures and Congress to require cigarettes to meet a
fire-resistance standard.

But tobacco companies, claiming fire-safe smokes would not be commercially
feasible, have repeatedly overpowered or outflanked such efforts. And the
way they have done it, secret documents and interviews show, is a textbook
example of a powerful industry using its wealth and ingenuity to stave off
regulation.

They have done it through a sophisticated, two-pronged strategy that has
included bankrolling in-house scientists and outside consultants to debunk
the technical feasibility of safer smokes.

At the same time, they have attracted the strangest of bedfellows by doling
out millions of dollars worth of grants, contracts and services to cement
an ingenious alliance with fire safety organizations. In the process, they
have won the favor, and in some cases the silence, of credible groups whose
whole purpose is saving lives.

And they have shifted the fire-resistance burden to manufacturers of
everything from mattresses and furniture to pajamas.

``Their answer (is) to fire-proof the world against our torches,'' said
Congressman Joseph Moakley, D-Mass., who began pushing fire-safe-cigarette
legislation in 1979.

Fire groups grateful

But some fire groups, grateful for tobacco's financial support, appear to
have accepted the industry's argument that fire-safe smokes remain a pipe
dream.

``I can't overemphasize the good that this money has done,'' said Fred
Allinson, president of the National Volunteer Fire Council, which has
received heavy support not only from cigarette manufacturers but from
smokeless tobacco giant United States Tobacco.

Tobacco officials deny any cynical motives. ``Philip Morris has a long
history of giving back to the communities in which our employees live and
work, and that includes supporting the firefighting community,'' a company
spokesman said.

Others see it differently.

``It would be like the international chiefs of police getting funding from
the Mafia to fight crime,'' complained Andrew McGuire of the Trauma
Foundation, a safety group in San Francisco.

But the strategy has paid huge dividends for the tobacco industry by
dividing the people whom lawmakers consult on fire-related issues, as
occurred last spring in New York when a fire-safe cigarette bill was defeated.

In many ways, the tobacco industry today has never seemed more vulnerable
- -- as evidenced by its dismal image and fervent campaign for congressional
protection from mega-lawsuits. But while the industry is seemingly on the
ropes, its mastery of the fire-safety debate reflects its staying power.

``This is not the industry of old,'' observed Don Shopland, a veteran
official with the National Cancer Institute. ``But they're far from dead
and far from dying . . . in terms of having a lot of clout to . . .
influence the political process.''

Although cigarettes seem like nothing more than tobacco wrapped in paper,
they are in fact carefully engineered to look, taste, smell and burn a
certain way -- and to go on burning when not being puffed.

This spares smokers the trouble of lighting up again, and pays off in
higher sales from cigarettes burning out in ashtrays. But it also means
that a cigarette rolling off the lip of an ashtray onto a mattress, or into
the crack of a sofa, can smolder undetected for 30 or 40 minutes before
bursting into flames.

The idea of safer smokes has been around for decades, with dozens of
patents granted on ways to make cigarettes burn cooler or go out when not
being puffed. Cigarette makers say these ideas either won't work or would
produce cigarettes no one would buy.

`World safe for cigarettes'

The result is that with active encouragement from the industry, government
and business have pursued a policy that tobacco foes describe as ``making
the world safe for cigarettes.''

For example, furniture and mattresses have been made more fire-safe,
cutting down on cigarette fires. But this approach has limitations, because
the long life-cycle of such items ensures that flammable furnishings remain
in use.

Big Tobacco's fear of changing its products is easy to understand. In the
United States, cigarettes are a nearly $50 billion-a-year business, and
among the most profitable of all consumer products. With so much at stake,
the cigarette makers are adamant about doing nothing that might reduce the
appeal.

They worry, too, that if government gets involved in the chemistry of the
manufactured cigarette, there is no telling where it might lead.

Lawsuits are another concern. A dead or disfigured child could be a hugely
sympathetic plaintiff if it were shown that his injury could have been
prevented.

With that in mind, an attorney with a top tobacco law firm voiced dismay in
1987 when R.J. Reynolds, in introducing its novel Premier brand, boasted
that Premier -- which heated, rather than burned, tobacco to reduce
second-hand smoke -- was coincidentally less apt to start fires.

Reynolds' announcement ``seriously undercuts'' the industry's legal
position, warned William S. Ohlemeyer of Shook Hardy & Bacon, in a memo
leaked to the Los Angeles Times.

``In litigation that is now quite unattractive . . . the existence of a
`goof-proof' cigarette . . . could make this litigation significantly more
attractive'' to plaintiffs, he wrote.

The threat fizzled when Premier bombed in test markets and wasn't mass
produced. But pressure was growing in Congress and the states. It
intensified after 1987 when a federal task force concluded that a few
changes in cigarettes would reduce the risk of fires -- including making
them thinner, packing the tobacco less densely, and using less porous paper.

Tobacco companies said such cigarettes would burn differently and produce
more toxic smoke. However, the federal task force found that the more
fire-safe, experimental cigarettes produced ``tar, nicotine, and carbon
monoxide . . . within the range of yields from the best-selling commercial
cigarettes.''

As a tobacco official had warned earlier, simply claiming that fire-safe
smokes were impossible had become ``politically inadequate.''

``The technology does exist as reflected in certain European cigarettes, as
well as'' two American brands, wrote Michael Kerrigan of the Tobacco
Institute in a 1982 memo leaked to the Times.

About the same time, officials with Burson-Marsteller, public relations
consultants to the industry, outlined a bold and imaginative plan of
outreach to the fire service. The time had come to ``position the tobacco
industry as a concerned `part of the solution' to influentials,'' the memo
said.

The plan was oiled by money, and lots of it -- distributed in the form of
grants, equipment and public relations and lobbying services to national
fire organizations and fire departments throughout the land.

Soon tobacco companies were funding ``the largest privately financed fire
education/fire prevention program in the United States,'' John Rupp, an
industry lawyer, told a Minnesota legislative panel.