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I've smoked on and off for many years but I gave up when I found out my Mrs was up the duff. I've been smoking a bit again in the last few months. Last weekend I was at the pub with a few mates and I was looking at a pack of cigs my mate had left of on a table and I noticed a disclaimer on the back of the pack at the bottom AUSTRALIAN FIRE RISK STANDARD COMPLIANT This was not on the packets before so I asked my mate what it meant and he had no idea. I asked a few other people if I could have a look at their packet and they all had the same disclaimer on the packet and no-one had any idea what it meant. The next day I did a bit of digging and I found out that Australian cigarettes have had to be fire safe compliant since the 23rd of march 2010. The idea is that cigarettes have to have some means of self extinguishing so they (supposedly) have a reduced risk of starting a fire if left unattended or dropped etc. So I looked into how they implement this feature. It turns out that there several ways they can do it which from what I can ascertain always involves the use of chemicals impregnated into the paper that the cigarettes are rolled in. The most common being ethylene vinyl acetate which is also a common industrial adhesive, sealant and sometimes used as carpet glue, there are also several other chemicals used to achieve this self extinguishing effect. So now we have the ludicrous situation where cigarettes contain chemicals to make them burn faster (burn accelerators) and chemicals to make them go out. After smoking these cigarettes many people complain of a metallic taste in their mouth, chest pains or they just feel sick (which is otherwise uncommon for experienced smokers) I've searched the web and I cannot find one study that proves that inhaling the fumes from combusted ethylene vinyl acetate is safe in rats, mice or humans. I can't even find any studies that have evaluated the dangers of inhaling these toxic fumes. Wikipedia has stated that Wiki provides a numbered link to a source of reference(4), clicking on that source gives a 404 error - file or directory not found. Several other links to sources of reference on the Wiki page were also dead ends. If anyone with a background in chemistry reads this and has an idea of the compounds produced and the toxicity thereof when ethylene vinyl acetate is combusted I'd be interested to know. Most of this seems to driven by insurance companies,lawyers and the tobacco industry trying to insulate itself from liability. Tobacco companies have established programs that fund fire departments worldwide to push this legislation and give it weight. So as a result result fire departments worldwide have been bribed to persuade legislators to insulate themselves (big Tobacco) from liability.