Fire Safe Cigarettes Hitting Europe?

Although there has been talk of fire safe cigarettes reaching the UK for the last seven years, the measure has never come to pass. Now, though, the London Fire Brigade is reporting on its website that the European Commission has now agreed on a safety standard for cigarettes and the EU is expected to start selling reduced ignition propensity (RIP) cigarettes (otherwise known as fire safe cigarettes (FSC)) from November, 2011. The measure is defined as “voluntary” but if manufacturers do not comply their products can be removed from the market.  (As of today, the measure has not yet come into force, but is still on the cards.)

Traditional cigarettes, currently still on sale within the EU, stay lit until reaching the butt 99% of the time, while fire safe cigarettes, currently on sale in the USA, Canada and Australia, retain ignition only 10% of the time unless the smoker puffs to keep the cigarette alight. These cigarettes work by adding two or three bands of paper along the length of the cigarette, which reduces the oxygen flow and thus causes the cigarette to go out if not puffed at that moment. There are, however, questions over the safety of these new cigarettes.

The state of New York mandated fire safe cigarettes in June, 2004 and in January, 2005 the Harvard School of Public Health published its study on them. The authors tested nineteen compounds in the cigarettes and all nineteen had higher levels of toxicity than their non-FSC counterparts, with carbon monoxide levels being higher by 11.4% and naphthalene 13.9%. Naphthalene can cause myriad side effects if one is exposed to enough of it, such as anaemia, convulsions, vomiting and even comas. In addition to the increased levels of toxic compounds, the bands of paper are glued together with an ethylene-vinyl acetate, copolymer emulsion based adhesive, which is used as carpet glue or the tube used in a glue gun. There is evidence, therefore, that fire safe cigarettes contain higher levels of toxic compounds than ‘normal’ cigarettes, and in a time when much focus is given to the ingredients in cigarettes, should lawmakers not be aiming to reduce these levels rather than increasing them?

Away from laboratory testing and into real world cases, the Internet is awash with cases of smokers who since smoking fire safe cigarettes have suffered from various health problems, which promptly ceased when they switched back to non-fire safe cigarettes or rolled their own. Such is the extent of the problem, in fact, that a petition to remove these cigarettes from the market now has over 27,000 signatures, many of whom state health complaints from the cigarettes.

It has long been known that traditional cigarettes contain an accelerant to keep the cigarette burning. From a business perspective it makes perfect sense: if the cigarette burns faster, the smoker is more likely to consume more and thus purchase more. Rolling papers do not contain this accelerant and are well known for extinguishing regularly, causing the smoker to relight it. One of the most frequently mentioned facts about cigarettes is that they contain over 4,000 chemicals, and so the question is why not simply remove the accelerant to have the same effect as RIP cigarettes, rather than add more chemicals and increase the toxicity of those already present? In The Medical Journal of Australia in 2004, Simon Chapman wrote that “The elimination of citrate and other burning agents in cigarette paper thus appears to be a simple and effective means of dramatically reducing the ignition propensity of cigarettes.”

A final point to consider is the overall effectiveness of fire safe cigarettes. New York’s statistics on smoking-related fires show that there were 5.36 fires per 10,000 smokers in the four years preceding 2004 and 5.69 in the four years afterwards. In 2008, however, there were 6.37 fires per 10,000 smokers, meaning that the number of smoking-related fires have actually increased since the introduction of RIP cigarettes, which is even more troubling when one considers the smoking rate dropped from 21.6% in 2003 to 16.8% in 2008.

Unlike the heated discussions surrounding other smoking-related legislation like plain packaging, display bans and graphic warnings being based upon the likelihood of success and government interference in personal choice, the debate on fire safe cigarettes hinges on the safety of the product – according to the reports of those suffering from them, the risks of smoking have changed from an increased risk of disease later in life to an immediate impact on health. While no one would argue against cigarettes that do indeed lower the chances of fires (or are safer in any other way), the issue in question here is whether fire safe cigarettes are really the answer they are presented as.

 

*This entry first appeared at www.smokescreens.org, October 2011, and has been slightly modified here*

Film Review: “The Woman In Black”

The Woman In Black has received a lot of attention since its announcement, partly due to it being a well-known story from its book and stage production, and partly because all eyes are on Daniel Radcliffe.

The film is a big departure from Daniel, who will forever be known as Harry Potter, no matter how illustrious his career goes on to be. Focusing on the actor for a moment, there can be little criticism of his performance. From his appearance to his character portrayal, he performed wonderfully. The drawback to casting Radcliffe however was not in his performance, but that the public has known him for such a long time as a young person, thanks to Harry Potter, that it’s hard to shake that from your mind when watching The Woman In Black. Which means that it’s difficult to disengage the actor from his previous roles to view him objectively in this film. Put another way, we feel like we know Radcliffe, and that offers a sense of comfort when watching him perform in a horror film – and it removes quite a large element of the suspense from the film because we’re just too comfortable with the lead actor as someone not to feel scared by. And because the film is almost voyeuristic in that you feel as though you are accompanying Radcliffe on his journey, there is a peculiar sense of protection throughout.

All that could be overlooked and indeed overcome if the writing was stellar, but sadly it wasn’t. With a 12A certificate The Woman In Black was never going to be a terrifying, white-knuckle ride that kept viewers on the edge of their seat. It gets off to a slow start, where we learn of Radcliffe’s sad personal problems before he embarks on a journey from London to England’s North East as part of his job as a lawyer. His task is to get the paperwork of a deceased widow in order so her house can be sold off. Once we see the house, the film starts to rely too heavily on tired horror cliches to shock an audience that is desensitised to such attempts. Scares and moments of suspense were thin on the ground, but they were almost entirely revoked thanks to obvious camera movements (who doesn’t expect something to happen when the actor is to one side of the screen while what’s behind him is in full view, or when there’s a close-up and the camera then pulls back?) or creepy music acting as a big neon sign warning of an impending moment for which to prepare. For a widely publicised film with a huge star in the lead role, not to mention the film’s history as a play and a book, there could and should have been more substance. With such a vast back-catalogue of haunted house films and stories from which to draw on, The Woman In Black could have been one of the scariest films to be released, but instead it found itself with an identity crisis, stuck in no-man’s land somewhere between horror and drama, not quite knowing where to lay its loyalties and eventually deciding on neither. You know you should be scared, but are left wondering why you weren’t. And for a 90-minute film, you’re also left wondering why it took so long for the story to get going. A slow start would be fine had it been a longer film, or picked up to a flurry of activity that left viewers hiding behind their hands from the ceaseless onslaught of scares and suspense, but instead when the lights come on there’s nothing to think but how anti-climatic it transpired to be. Throughout the film, rather than gasps and screams, the most common reaction from the audience was laughter – not the reaction horror filmmakers tend to go for, and a rather clear indication of how scary this film turned out to be.

Perhaps it was the inclusion of Radcliffe that encouraged the writers to keep the film tame – with his fan base predominately comprised of the younger members of society, and his reputation mostly as a child star, it may have been considered too big a leap to enter a bonafide, adult horror film, and instead a deliberate attempt was made to achieve a 12A rating. It’s pure speculation, but if it’s true, it was a mistake. A film like The Woman In Black deserves a genuinely terrifying script with a more experienced director behind the camera to ensure that big scares occur and when they do, they aren’t pre-empted by camera placement or music. The success of the Paranormal Activity trilogy should be a lesson to all horror filmmakers: less is more. An audience is more scared when something happens out of the blue, with nothing to prepare them for the scare; and never fail to make the final thirty minutes a hive of scares. The Woman In Black deserved that treatment, but it didn’t get it.

Rating: 2/5

 

One Man’s View of the Political Scene

The Chinese proverb, ‘May You Be Born In Interesting Times’ is often applied to a period of economic, political or social upheaval. Yeah, but tell that to the people of Tibet, or those poor buggers who work night and day making trainers for obese Westerners to wear around the house. My point being, context is everything and life is at best ambiguous; at worst it’s a bad mutha with an attitude problem.

Let’s take politics. Yeah, I know, sleep city. But it does matter because the people in power are making decisions every day that affect the like of you and me.

The new coalition government is definitely at the ‘tail end’ of the honeymoon period, still screwing the country day and night, even if the country isn’t really in the mood. Pretty soon the country is gonna feel sore and empty, and want to just cuddle for a bit. Then it will start demanding changes. Small things to begin with – more jobs, better healthcare, a greener economy and some hope.

Naturally, like the new boss of a department, this government plans to ring in the changes. Promises have already been made to adequately equip the troops and to downsize military personnel (might these two objectives be linked…). Elsewhere, the government scrapped the plan to replace NHS Direct with a ‘111’ information service, staffed primarily by trained call-handlers instead of expensive nurses. That word ‘expensive’ is likely to rear its head frequently over the years to come, along with that other much loved term, ‘value for money’.

The capitalist model is based upon profitability, but whether everything can be made to run at a profit (state healthcare, utilities and rail services to name but three) remains to be seen. Certainly, under Labour, it never quite came together.

So we’re in a state of flux, past the shock that wasn’t so much a shock to some, but more a disappointment. It’s still early days in the relationship and lots of promises are being made. Every new government defines itself, at least in part, by earnestly telling the electorate what it is not. And it’s always the same basic song-sheet: we are not the last load of bozos who messed everything up.

One thing that’s perhaps different this time is that, thanks in part to the proliferation of 24-hour media content, the electorate is much more aware of the impact of world politics and global economics on a nation or sovereign state.

Having started this piece with a Chinese proverb, it seems fitting somehow to find another piece of wisdom a little closer to home. As the French say, ‘plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.’ For the non-Europhiles among you, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Film Review: “Les Diaboliques”, a Must-See Movie

We all have films we could watch over and over for the way they delight us and we’ve probably all seen a few that have required more than one viewing to fully appreciate but what about a film that enthralled us to such an extent that we wish we could have our memories erased just to see it again for the first time?

That’s how I feel about Les Diaboliques. God, how I envy anyone who is about to sit down and watch that for the first time!

If your exploration into French cinema stops with Amelie then you are indeed a lucky person. And I say lucky not because you’ve saved yourself time but because you have so much to discover. For among the many fine films to come out of France, which is after all where the motion picture was born, there is this perfect example of horror come noir come thriller.

Released in 1955, it was directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot from a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac. It’s set in a slightly iffy boarding school run by the truly despicable Michel Delassalle (played by Paul Meurisse) although the school is owned by his frail wife, Christina (Vera Clouzot, who happens to be the real-life wife of the director) who also teaches there. Michel is loathed by his colleagues as well as his pupils and being the kind of guy he is, he’s also messing around with another teacher called Nicole (Simone Signoret) but rather than the fancy woman and the wife despising each other, they enjoy a friendship of sorts based on the fact that they both hate Michel because of his abusive behaviour towards them. Nicole, being stronger in character than Christina, finally has enough of Michel and concocts a plan to do away with him thereby freeing them both from his tyrannical grip. Christina is reluctant at first to go so far as murder her husband but Michel pushes her buttons once too often and she later agrees to help Nicole. Under false pretences, they lure him away to a quiet location and after a brief struggle…

And I shall reveal no more because what ensues has to be some of the most masterful suspense ever put onto film and if you watch it with the lights out and the heating off, you’ll probably feel like you’re there. It’s shot in black and white, which adds austerity to its already bleak atmosphere and the tension builds steadily right to the very end. The acting is spot on – particularly Signoret, who mesmerises as the cheesed-off mistress and many little details caught by the director will send shivers of paranoia down your spine. The film ends with an instruction to the audience to not reveal the outcome and you would truly be depriving your friends of a cinematic treat if you did.

It’s hard to see how Hitchcock, who reportedly missed out on securing the films rights to the novel by mere hours, could have done any more to have us gripping our seats in fear. A true masterpiece and worthy of its inclusion in numerous lists of greatest films.

It was remade for a modern audience by Hollywood in 1996 with Sharon Stone playing the role of Nicole. It was also given a different ending and although I haven’t seen that version, I’ve read the reviews. They read as I expected.

Go on, treat yourself to the original French version and make me green! You won’t be disappointed. Just don’t tell your friends how it ends.

The New Fronts: Outdoor & Campus Smoking Bans

by Michael McFadden, author of Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains

 
Anyone who’s followed the War On Smokers over the last twenty years or so has seen the change from what seemed like quite reasonable requests to accommodate people who disliked concentrated smoke in the air of places they were required to be to a demand that smokers pretty much be relegated to a back corner parking lot on the dark side of the moon.

1998 brought about the first huge leap from reason in that process when California banned smoking in all workplaces, including bars, that employed six or more people.  It was followed about five years later by bar bans in Delaware and New York.  A few years after that a massive three state electoral push funded by multi-million dollar TV campaigning brought referenda votes in Nevada, Arkansas, and Ohio also banning smoking in bars.  As of 2012 roughly half the states in the US have such far-reaching bans, often including even private clubs and casinos… despite clear and indisputably tremendous losses in gambling tax revenue (1)

With the roll toward hospitality bans seemingly moving along on its own at this point, the antismoking juggernaut has turned its attention to the next step: doing something about the Smoker Problem outdoors.  As usual in their canny step-by-step campaign methodology, they focused first on the pleasant outdoor patios that many establishments had set up in attempts to mollify their smoking clientele and maintain their businesses.  The Antismokers looked out through their windows over a meal and said, “Why should WE be locked up inside here while the smokers have the choice to sit outside in all that fresh air and sunshine?  Something MUST be done about this!”

Enter the push for outdoor smoking bans.

 

In some cases the antismoking lobbyists were able to push these bans forward purely on the basis of their money, power, and carefully rigged surveys that supposedly showed “wide public support” for such bans.  In other cases, where legislators proved to have a bit more backbone, antismoking researchers produced studies supposedly providing a scientific grounding for them.  In reality, once one looks behind the headlines, one finds that the studies actually provide no such thing: generally all that’s demonstrated is that smoke does indeed exist in outdoor smoking areas and that we do indeed have technology nowadays that can even measure and quantify it.  (2)  The science says nothing about any real threat to human health from the concentrations and durations of exposures involved, but the press-releases, “authoritative statements,” and headlines make up for the lack of science and outdoor bans have gradually been spreading like an ugly and slow-moving plague as they moved beyond patios to encompass public plazas, parks, and beaches.  We’ve even seen the argument made that beach bans are justified on the basis of the “fire hazard” caused by smoking while sitting on a quintillion tons of sand next to a sextillion liters of water

However there was one venue that the Antismokers were having a harder time with: outdoor bans on university campuses.  University students have the uncomfortable habit of wanting a bit more information than press-released headlines provide, and many of them had enough sense to realize that there was very little substance to any claims of a “health threat” existing from the passing and diluted encounters with smoke that students or workers might experience in their daily campus travels.  The “Smoke Free Campuses” movement had tens of millions of dollars behind it and was able to coordinate all sorts of “planning conferences” to push its agenda,(3) but still most universities resisted the clarion call to “Clean Air.”

So what weapon was left to bring traditionally unruly and authority-resisting student populations into line?  Simple: just as with previous smoking ban efforts, money was the key.  In the last few years, as Smoke Free Campuses has expanded its hold from 300 or so up to almost 600 campuses they have “played the money card” and begun blackmailing universities: if the school wants millions of dollars in grant money they have to obey the new rules and agree to ban smoking. (4) At first, in order to tone down the protests, administrators will always emphasize the idea that the bans will be “self-enforcing” and that violators will simply be “offered” education and help if they want to quit smoking.  Of course once the ban is in place and accepted as a de facto situation the velvet gloves come off and students face fines or even expulsion if they refuse to bend over and take it.

Is there *any* medical and scientific justification for such bans?  No.  They are purely and absolutely a simple attempt at social engineering: a plan to treat the students like lab rats, “electro-shocking” them until they conform to the properly desired behavior patterns.  Even if one accepts the Antismokers’ own figures on the threats of secondhand smoke exposure indoors, the threat from walking by smokers, even crowds of smokers on a regular basis near the doorways of buildings, is so small as to be outright laughable.  Accepting the US EPA Report’s claim of a 19% lung cancer risk increase after 40 years of daily workplace exposure and applying that claim, with proper adjustments for duration and dilution, the absolute risk involved for students on a smoking campus would indicate that allowing such smoking would produce roughly one extra lung cancer for every two hundred million student-years of exposure.  While there are a lot of “perpetual grad students” out there on the campuses, I don’t think there are any that can lay claim to that sort of perpetuity!

Outdoor smoking bans are generally unjustified in almost any setting.  Outdoor smoking bans involving entire college campuses are simply efforts at behavior control aimed at a population that is easily threatened and intimidated out of fear of losing their investments in their educations.  They make as much sense, scientifically speaking, as smoking bans based on worries about setting the beaches and oceans on fire!

 

References:

 

1) “The Lies Behind The Smoking Bans,” p.19.  http://kuneman.smokersclub.com/PASAN/StilettoGenv5h.pdf

2)  http://wispofsmoke.net/satire.txt

3) http://smokefreephilly.org/take-action/support-smoke-free-campuses/

4) http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2012/02/15/campus-smoking-ban-sparks-debate