Defective Lighters

[somedude4]

I was trying to smoke today when my lighter, one of those cheap gas station models, started to catch on fire. Now, you'd think that a lighter would have non-flammable material around the flame area, but apparently not. The part around where the flame came out was made up of some plastic/cement-like material which started burning up and producing thick black smoke. This is sort of disturbing because it looked like it had been eating away there for some time and that smoke did not look good to inhale (my throat still hurts from inhaling a little bit of it) and I've been using that lighter for a while...
Has anyone else ever had something like that happen, or is this just some freak occurance?