On a sunny Sunday afternoon, just before the final week of classes at Boston University, Parissa Salimian is taking a break from hours of studying for finals, staring bleary-eyed at passersby from her perch atop the steps just outside the entrance of Mugar Memorial Library. She’s smoking a filtered Camel cigarette, joining about a dozen smokers who have stepped outside to light up in order to cope with the pressures of preparing for exams and writing final papers. >>
For almost a century, public debate about fire safety and cigarettes has included discussions about making "fire-safe" cigarettes, which use special banded papers that are self-extinguishing unless a smoker puffs on them. For decades, attempts to pass federal and state laws mandating the sale of fire-safe cigarettes failed, despite claims that unattended cigarettes spark fires that kill an average of 700 to 900 people nationwide each year. >>