Kill 'Em All?ro;”Let the Tobacco God Sort 'Em Out

Last week, New York passed a law requiring that all cigarettes be self-extinguishing. We were told the law was designed to cut down on cigarette-related fires. It's a nice thought, but seems a little much, given the comparatively small number of fires actually started by smoldering cigarettes every year.

Self-extinguishing cigarettes mean one of two things for smokers. Either they're going to have to smoke each cigarette continuously to keep it from going out, or they're going to have to light it repeatedly.

In the latter case, that constant relighting means smokers will be using lighters and matches much more quickly than they normally would. Then consider how many more people will be hot-boxing their smokes to avoid the inconvenience of relighting every couple of minutes.

Smokers who let their cigarettes smolder in the ashtray may waste a lot of smoking time per smoke, but they also avoid inhaling a good amount of carcinogen. By forcing people to hot box them, these new cigarettes pose a much greater danger to the smoker than they might otherwise.

Who, then, is behind this evil plan? Our guess is either lobbyists representing the healthcare system (which will surely profit from the new flood of patients with smoking-related illnesses) or those rabid anti-smoking activists in state government who, having found it impossible to tax or ban some of us out of the habit, are now simply trying to bump us off. As with so many wrongheaded points, this initiative is fed to the public under the guise of "safety."

In the end, we're just happy to report that self-extinguishing cigarettes don't work.