Terressa Grier has noticed something strange in her Marlboro Lights. She's puffing harder to get the full nicotine satisfaction.

"I don't know what's in them. I thought it's just me, but then other people are like 'no, they do have a bad taste,'" said Ms. Grier, a 32-year-old smoker in Gower, Mo., who has smoked since she was 19.

Two weeks ago, her husband, a smokeless tobacco chewer, picked up her Marlboro pack and showed her three letters next to the bar code, FSC.

Fire-Safe Cigarettes - a fast-extinguishing cigarette aimed at lowering home fire deaths - were signed into law in Missouri last month and will be effective on Sept. 1, 2010. Many local retailers have already stocked up on the new smokes and drawn the ire of customers.

Complaints range from becoming ill from a coppery taste, a Democrat conspiracy to get smokers to quit, even metals put in the cigarette. "Customers have told me they thought they may have put fiberglass in there. And they're wondering how can that be really healthy for you," said Sarah Jones, of Smokers Outlet on Frederick Avenue. "I mean cigarettes are already really unhealthy."

Fire-safe cigarettes are designed to go out if they're not puffed on regularly. They have a special paper that causes the lighted end to burn out when the burning tobacco reaches a treated section.

Along with other measures like flame-resistant mattresses, fire officials hope that the new cigarettes will reduce the chances for house fires caused by people falling asleep while smoking.

Three years ago, the St. Joseph Fire Department blamed a cigarette in a bedroom as the apparent cause for a fire that destroyed Misty Crockett's home. No one was home at the time.

Ms. Crockett blames the fire at her home, owned by her now-deceased fiance, on an electrical malfunction. A smoker for 14 years, she has accepted the new cigarette as a bothersome new reality for the cost of being a smoker.

"You put your cigarette down and go into the other room and you come back and it's out," she said. "There's nothing you can do if you're going to be a smoker. They don't taste any different, but you just have to suck harder to get anything out of them."

The fire-safe packs sell for the same price as traditional cigarettes. In the last six years, 37 states and the District of Columbia have enacted laws requiring that only fire-safe smokes be sold.

Some smokers have crossed state borders to buy the old style of cigarettes. The new cigarettes became law in Kansas on July 1. The cigarettes become law in Nebraska on Jan. 1, 2010. Tobacco companies say they can't afford to keep making both cigarette varieties.

Ms. Grier, the trusty Marlboro Light smoker, has switched to Camels, which she says is the only traditional cigarette that her local gas station still stocks. Once those are sold out, Ms. Grier isn't sure what she'll do. "Maybe just quit," she said, half-sure.

Ahmad Safi can be reached

at ahmadsafi@npgco.com.