SALEM (AP) — Some Oregon stores have been selling cigarettes that don’t meet new state specifications for fire safety, state agents say.

The state fire marshal’s office has stockpiled 1,135 packs of cigarettes seized from five stores because they don’t comply with Oregon’s Jan. 1 law requiring cigarettes to be fire-safe.

Anita Phillips, license and permit services manager for the fire marshal, called the seizures disconcerting.

“What we really want them to do is take them off the shelves,” she said.

Oregon is among 22 states that require cigarettes be designed to go out when left unattended. It’s a means of reducing damage and death caused by fires.

Typically, cigarette manufacturers wrap cigarettes with two or three thin bands of less-porous paper. If a fire-safe cigarette is left unattended, the tobacco will self-extinguish went it reaches one of those rings.

The state last year ordered manufacturers to stop shipping old-style cigarettes on July 1.

Phillips said that should have given wholesalers and distributors enough time to send their soon-to-be-banned products to states where they could still be sold and for retailers to liquidate their supplies.

Portland-based cigarette distributor Alan Campf said his company, A&S Marketing, took a loss of several thousand dollars selling noncompliant cigarettes last fall at deep discounts to retailers.

It now appears, he said, that many of those retailers haven’t been able to move the cigarettes quickly enough, so “some retailers are just stuck.”

He said the state made matters worse by requiring the payment of tax stamps totaling $11.80 per carton before the cigarettes were sold to consumers, which couldn’t be recouped if the cigarettes went unsold.

A Department of Revenue letter last week told distributors the tax could be refunded.

“They should have come out with this in June, Campf said.

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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com