FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON FIRE SAFE CIGARETTES What is a Fire Safe Cigarette?
Where can I find more information about Fire Safe Cigarettes?

FOR CIGARETTE MANUFACTURERS What do I need to register my Fire Safe Cigarettes?
How often do I need to recertify my cigarettes?
When did this law on Fire Safe Cigarettes take place?
What if my cigarettes are certified in another state already?
What if the name changed on a brand family of one of our cigarettes?
What if physical modifications are made to a brand family that was previously certified?
What if we add a new brand family?

Q What is a Fire Safe Cigarette?
A The most common fire safe technology used by cigarette manufacturers is to wrap cigarettes with two or three thin bands of less porous paper that act as speed bumps to slow down a burning cigarette. If a fire safe cigarette is left unattended, the burning tobacco will reach one of these speed bumps and self extinguish.

The actual term for these cigarettes is reduced ignition propensity cigarettes, which means that there is less tendency for them to continue burning. However, this does not mean that in all instances the cigarettes will not continue to burn, so the same caution should be used regardless of the term fire safe .

Although fire safe is a commonly used descriptor for the reduced ignition propensity cigarettes, keep in mind that there is NO SUCH THING as a truly fire safe cigarette. Any item that relies on ignition in order to function is never really fire safe . Always keep in mind that cigarettes and other similar products should be kept away from children, pets, bedding, upholstered furniture, and anything else that might burn.

Smokers should always use a deep, sturdy ashtray, never smoke while drowsy or using alcohol and/or prescription medications, and follow all safety precautions when exposing of smoking materials, ashes, etc.

Q Where can I find more information about Fire Safe Cigarettes?
A To learn more about fire safe cigarettes, visit the Fire Safe Cigarette Coalition s website at

Q What do I need to register my Fire Safe Cigarettes?
A You need to log into your account for your company to fill out the certification application. You will need to include a copy of product testing certification by an accredited laboratory for each brand family showing all styles listed (Ultras, Menthols, etc.), pictures (color copy or on CD) of carton artwork showing the FSC logo near the UPC code, and payment of $1,000.00 per brand family that can be processed online. Click here to login into your account.

Q How often do I need to recertify my cigarettes?
A You need to recertify every 3 years.

Q When did this law on Fire Safe Cigarettes take place?
A This law went into effect on July 2009. FSC legislation is Senate Bill 456, which you can download from the Legislature s website.

Q What if my cigarettes are certified in another state already?
A Although we recognize and accept approved testing from another state, we still require all documentation and fees.

Q What if the name changed on a brand family of one of our cigarettes?
A If you make a name change to any brand family previously certified by the State of WV, you must submit a letter stating what the name was and what it is now. There is NO additional fee for this.

Q What if physical modifications are made to a brand family that was previously certified?
A If you have made physical modifications to a brand family that was previously certified by the State of WV, those cigarettes must be retested and you must resubmit the information on that brand family with a current report from Arista Laboratories (or whatever approved lab you use) showing that the new cigarettes meet the FSC standards. There is NO additional fee for this.

Q What if we add a new brand family?
A Even if you are previously certified, if you add a new brand family you must submit all documentation and fees for that brand family.

What brand of cigarettes did christopher hitchens smoke: tilling my patch of the content farm

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In mid December, 2011, so almost exactly six months ago, Christopher Hitchens died. I didn’t know the man, so I couldn’t write much of a remembrance of him, but I did get to meet him once, so I typed up a little memoiristic essay about the time he smoked a cigarette in a Columbia journalism school classroom. Bittersweet, a little funny. Very Hitchens. I moved on with my life and my dissertation.

One of the nice features about using WordPress as a blogging platform is that it provides a fairly robust set of statistics telling me who visited the site and where they came from. The Hitchens post got me a little spike for the first few days, which didn’t surprise me. I knew some of my Twitter followers would see it, and so would my Facebook friends and even some people who searched for information on Hitchens. I even suspected I would get some traffic for people looking up the cigarette angle. After all, he died of esophageal cancer, and there could very well be a connection.

What I didn’t bank on though was the fact that six months later, hardly a day goes by that the search string “Christopher

Hitchens cigarette brand” or something of that sort brings people to my blog. It’s not huge, maybe 3 5 page views a day. But that’s a good 600 or so over six months, right? (I did the math in my head.) I mentioned this to my dissertation adviser a few weeks ago, and he suggested I rename the blog “What brand of cigarettes did Christopher Hitchens smoke?” and start selling ads based on the waves of traffic I’d get from that bit of SEO.

Why is it that people are so fascinated by his brand of cigarettes (by the way, the answer appears to be Rothmans (thanks to commenter Chad for the heads up). When I was searching for my own post so that I could link to it above, I started typing “what brand of cigarettes ” into my Safari search box, and got the list of suggested searches that the image in this paragraph depicts (by the way, changing from “did” to “does” gives a completely different list notice that only Obama is alive among the suggestions do people really think Obama’s smoking is in the past tense?). My deduction about people’s curiosity, based on this list, is somewhat depressing. These people are all glamorous. Marilyn Monroe. James Dean. John Lennon. Kurt Cobain. And of course, all of these examples died too young. On the plus side for Hitchens, he’s as cool as John Wayne (or two notches less cool, going by rank order), and a notch cooler than the Beatles (Lennon excepted). On the downside, it means that cigarettes are still seen as being a symbol of cool, and people want to know what brand they should be smoking so that they too can be cool. Not surprising I guess, but still sad.

Anyway, I choose to take the happier conclusion that ornery, erudite, iconoclastic journalist essayists are as important to the world as the Beatles. And as cool as James Dean, though Hitchens was a rebel of many causes.

Postscript I suspect, of course, that owing to the proliferation of Christopher Hitchens cigarette references in this post, it’s on its way to becoming my all time more popular. Interested advertisers are welcome to contact me by email.