Fire-safety cigarettes mandatory next month

DESPITE their name, RIP cigarettes are designed to save lives.

The RIP — reduced ignition propensity — relates to a newly designed paper used in the manufacture of cigarettes.

And although there has been a certain reluctance by the industry to use the technique, the European Commission has directed it must be introduced by mid-December.

The RIP design involves two rings of thicker paper or bands — “speed bumps” — that restrict oxygen access to the burning end of the cigarette.

It is specially made and treated to ensure that if the smoker stops dragging on it — if for example they fall asleep — it will go out.

Cigarettes are believed to cause over 30,000 fires a year in the EU, leading to more than 1,000 deaths and 4,000 injuries.

In Britain alone, fires started by cigarettes kill more people than any other. And in Finland, where the RIP design has been tried out over the past 18 months, the number fires started by cigarettes has dropped by 43%. Such evidence, says the European Commission, suggests about 500 lives a year could be saved in the EU.

The RIP cigarette has been available in the US, Canada and Australia for several years but, despite the fact the technology has been around for at least 20 years, cigarette companies have not introduced it into Europe.

The industry has resisted pressure from anti-smoking and other bodies to introduce the safer paper but has until the middle of December to ensure all cigarettes are RIP.

Three years ago, the European Commission defined the new safety requirements after discussions with member states, the tobacco and paper industries and NGOs. The European Committee for Standardisation has developed the new standards and national authorities will enforce them.

Announcing the new standards, EU Health and Consumer Commissioner John Dalli said: “There is no such thing as a safe cigarette and, obviously, the safest thing is not to smoke at all.

“But if people choose to smoke then the new standards will require tobacco companies to make only reduced ignition propensity cigarettes, and potentially protect hundreds of citizens from this fire hazard.”