If you can forgive the pun, legislation requiring Reduced Ignition Propensity paper in the manufacture of cigarettes has sprea

Handsel Art

Date: 3 February 2008

For Immediate Release

Contact: J.R. Few at

(870) 427-1365 or email

Smoke and Mirrors?

If you can forgive the pun, legislation requiring Reduced Ignition Propensity (RIP) paper in the manufacture of cigarettes has spread like wildfire in the U.S. and even internationally in the past 5 years. This paper is manufactured with periodic ’speed bumps’ intended to extinguish the cigarette when not actively being inhaled. The RIP cigarettes have been promoted among public health advocates as ostensibly a challenge to tobacco companies. Hement Goswami, chairperson of the Burning Brain Society in Chandigarh, India offered an alternative perspective at the International Society for the Prevention of Tobacco Induced Disease conference in Little Rock last fall.

A synopsis of Mr Goswami’s presentation follows: RIP cigarettes were not adequately tested for real world situations to justify the claims about improved safety. Legislation spreading across the U.S. and into Canada and the E.U. is based on a New York 2003 Code standard. Nothing has demonstrated that these “lit products” would in fact save lives. Contrarily, New York City civilian fire deaths actually increased in 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile, over 24 states and Canada have adopted policies requiring that cigarettes be manufactured according to these criteria.

Goswami’s second crucial insight is noting that public health officials have taken up the RIP banner without any real evidence of improving the public health. There is no data on the health consequences of the toxins in the RIP paper. Industry policies state no intention to modify combustible additives in the tobacco itself. There is no evidence that the actual “smoking behavior” of puffing a cigarette to stay lit would not be more dangerous and may even increase nicotine addiction.

And lastly, using meticulous document research he shows that the tobacco industry has actually been planning to promote a “safer cigarette” in the minds of focus groups since 1981. Project Tomorrow was the 1994 Phillip Morris program to recreate the cigarette and remarket tobacco for a perceived reduced “risk of fire in the home environment.” Today, Phillip Morris holds 15 different patents for RIP paper and RJ Reynolds has reported plans to manufacture all their cigarettes with RIP properties by 2009.

Is this and the recent policy change a huge gain by tobacco free advocates or a maneuver to market the idea of safe cigarettes? Perhaps the gravest concern is that public health advocates waste truly scarce and outspent resources challenging a rogue predatory industry’s sleight of hand. Mr. Goswami can provide literally hours of documentation for what he calls, “the biggest fraud on the public health in the last 20 years.”

The group Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights recognizes that evaluating tobacco free strategies may be difficult except to challenge what ever the tobacco industry endorses. In the last election cycle the tobacco industry spent millions of dollars opposing increased tobacco taxes and tobacco free environments. Yet somehow tobacco companies are being made to appear to have made political compromises with the public health on RIP paper.

The National Fire Protection Association, a group historically intent upon promoting the sprinkler industry, is the major proponent of legislative policies requiring RIP technologies. While no financial support from the tobacco cartel is readily apparent, their data supporting RIP is painfully circular. Their vehicle group, the Coalition for Fire-Safe Cigarettes actually promotes the use of “safe” and “cigarette” in the same breath.

The CDC makes no recommendation for RIP as a means of reducing tobacco prevalence. Smoke free advocates should weigh carefully whether our actions toward policy change are actually effective tobacco prevention and not a well planned manipulation by the tobacco industry. We know there is no safe cigarette. We also know the lengths the industry will go towards accommodating the perception of a less harmful product. Public health advocates would be well advised to reevaluate spending political capital on policy change that is not evidence based to reduce tobacco use.

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