This sounds a bit weird to me. Why do cigarette companies take blame for people who smoke and cause fires while falling asleep during it? Do we blame knife manufacturers when a cook cuts himself?
Note that I'm not saying here that they simply fail to use some technology or chemical that would cause a cigarette to burn out. They are doing the opposite; a hand-rolled cigarette burns out on its own.
Cigarette fires are usually caused when a smoker falls asleep while holding a cigarette.
At one point tobacco companies developed non-addictive cigarettes and kept it a secret.
Source: A long time back a friend of mine's brother was part of a faux-jury assembled by tobacco company lawyers to do like a focus group to research how real juries in some real trial might think/feel. They revealed all kinds of stuff to these folks. They made them sign NDAs, of course, but he told us everything anyway. That was one of the things I remember: they made non-addictive cigs and kept it a secret.
I suspect it would not do well as a product, all the downsides of smoking without the rewarding nicotine buzz. It would be interesting to learn more.
There is no gunpowder in cigarettes:
https://www.verywellmind.com/big-tobaccos-list-of-599-cigare...
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=27857
A non-addictive cigarette would have to have no nicotine b/c nicotine is addictive:
https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/toba...
"Source: A long time back a friend of mine's brother was part of a faux-jury assembled by tobacco company lawyers to do like a focus group to research how real juries in some real trial might think/feel."
Ycombinator post<--carapace<--friend<--brother<--faux-jury<--lawyers<--tobacco company
Even facts get changed when they're nested >5 levels deep in human networks.
A person is holding something flammable without the respect it deserves. The human desperation to place blame needs to be restrained better.
Have you smoked a cigarette recently (as in at least the past 10 years)?. This is absolutely what they do. I'm not sure what the exact flame out time is for any particular brand, but it's a real drag (ahem) for people who like to smoke slowly, as the first re-lit hit feels very harsh.
According to Wikipedia[1] fire-safe cigarettes are required in all 50 states as of 2011. It's been awhile since I've smoked but I remember me and my friends bitching about the fire safe paper many years before that. We also theorized that it was making the cig more harsh in general. Of course we never had any evidence of this.
I might be wrong about this, but it seems to me that simple paper + tobacco hand rolled cigs natural behavior would be to not flame out, or do so much more slowly. What's stopping it from continuing to burn?
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_safe_cigarette#United_Sta...
For hand rolled I'm not sure, I just remember that they would go out much easier, whatever is rolled inside of them
When my apartment building nearly caught fire because someone two buildings over fell asleep with a cigarette in hand, killed themselves, and burned down two other apartments, of course people wondered why cigarettes don't burn out on their own when you stop taking drags.
But what about a person dropping a lit cigarette on a couch (either sleeping or not). A cigarette isn't an open flame so the above doesn't apply. Is there a reasonable expectation that a lit cigarette would cause a couch to catch on fire? If there is, and a jury agreed, then the person who dropped it would be negligent.
But I would expect said person's lawyer to show that a standard cigarette dropped on a couch would not and could not cause a fire. But cigarettes manufactured by company X are treated with chemical Y in order to make them non-standard. And while the client may be partially negligent (for dropping the cigarette or falling asleep), the manufacture is also partially negligent for (knowingly) adding fire sustaining chemicals to an otherwise standard cigarette. If the cigarette manufacturer could prove that a standard cigarette would catch a couch on fire, and the knowledge of this was obvious to a standard person, then the person would be 100% negligent.
That is what I would assume anyway, I'm not in the industry.
Based on the American principle of jurisprudence commonly known as "sue the one with the most money", the families of those burnt-up people would probably go after the cigarette manufacturer.
The smoker, after all, would probably not routinely have burning embers smoldering in their home without the cigarette, would not be careless with fire without the casual familiarity with the burning cigarette, and would not be smoking at all without the addictive herbs and chemicals added to the cigarette by the manufacturer.
Imagine if a firearms manufacturer used television and movies to promote the idea that frequently firing live rounds in your own home was a fun and relaxing activity that is completely normal and acceptable (like Elvis shooting his television--free endorsement!). And occasionally someone might die from overpenetration. Gunmakers would then probably promote something like aramid or kevlar fabric wallboard sheathing, too, for more bullet-resistant walls. Arms companies have not, in fact, done anything quite that careless, yet they still get sued occasionally when gun owners are negligent. Not because they deserve the blame; because they have the most money.
If that knife manufacturer had deep pockets, you can bet your ass that eventually some clumsy cook would sue them.