Fire-Safe Cigarette Symptoms 'Silly' or Serious?

By Rusty Surette, NEWS 9

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Most smokers already know cigarettes are bad, but there's increasing concern that new fire-safe cigarettes are doing double the damage to their bodies and to those around the smokers.

Legislation that went into effect January 1 requires retailers to sell what's known as fire-safe cigarettes.

"These things will self extinguish," said Battalion Chief Tim Adams of the Oklahoma City Fire Department. "They are like a cigar. If you don't smoke them, they will go out."

The goal is decrease the number of fires, but smokers say the risks far outweigh the benefits.

"Some of them work, some of them don't," said smoker Larry Miller.

Miller hates the taste of the new cigarettes, but he's more concerned about what's been added inside.

"They don't say what it is," Miller said. "They just put it in there and you get what you get."

Miller, and many others, are worried there's new chemicals inside that's doing more harm to their health., but experts say there's nothing new to fear.

The only change is the thickness of the paper, and that's what stops the cigarette from burning if the smoker stops puffing.

"It's almost kind of silly because cigarettes are so dangerous and so unhealthy," said Stephen Prescott of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. "To think a minor change like this can make them any worse is is just really kind of a silly argument."

So why do smokers say they can tell a difference in the taste and how they feel?

Doctors say it's called the nocebo effect. It's when you think something new is harming you, when in fact, it isn't.

"Sometime being primed by it, being suggested to them...can amplify the experience, but these are real symptoms to these folks," said Herman Jones of the OU Health and Science Department of Neurology.

Doctors also say the safest cigarette on the market is the one you don't smoke.

Forty-eight other states have passed or at least filed legislation requiring the sale of fire-safe cigarettes.