We your petitioners, urge you
to accelerate progress on Australia legislating to adopt and implement a national standard for reduced ignition propensity (“RIP”) cigarettes, sometimes referred to as reduced fire risk (“RFR”) cigarettes.
These cigarettes are designed to meet a performance standard that causes a cigarette to be far less likely to burn down when not being smoked and thus greatly reduce the risk of fires caused by dropped or discarded cigarettes.
It is now 19 months since the Police and Emergency Services
Ministers all agreed that a RIP standard should be developed, and 26 months since an expert report recommending that Australia should legislate to adopt such a standard was delivered to the Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging in August 2004.
In this time, six US states have either implemented or legislated for mandatory RIP cigarettes, with another two (Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) having legislation pending. Canada implemented national legislation in October 2005.
Early data are already available for the state of New York. From January to June 2004, there were 17 reported deaths from cigarette fires in New York, according to the Office of Fire Protection and Control.
From July 1 through December 31, 2004 there were 11 deaths from cigarette fires, a 35% decrease over the first half of the year.
These encouraging results are likely to under-estimate the true impact of RIP legislation because there is no national RIP cigarette legislation in the USA, and so many non-RIP cigarettes would be still being smoked by New York residents, being purchased outside the state.
We urge you to expedite the adoption of the standard that has been developed by Standards Australia and to then unite in supporting the introduction of a national law that would require all cigarettes sold in Australia to meet that standard. This is a simple piece of powerful public health legislation, fully supported by at least one cigarette manufacturer in Australia (Philip Morris), which promises to reduce deaths, burns, loss of property, animal life and bushland.
