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Prison Conditions
Half of states ban tobacco use in prisons
March 25, 2010
By Andrew M. Seaman, special for USA TODAY
A month before Virginia banned smoking in its prisons, Warden Daniel Braxton decided to kick his own 50-year smoking habit.
"I figured I'd be a good role model," said Braxton of Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, Va.
A growing number of states are cracking down on tobacco use on prison grounds to prevent illness and help bring down health care costs.
Virginia, which instituted its ban in February, is the most recent state to do so, said Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections.
A USA TODAY review of the 50 states found that 25 states ban tobacco for staff and inmates on prison grounds.
Georgia plans to enact a smoking ban Dec. 1, according to Bronson Frick, associate director of the Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation.
Many other states have bans that primarily outlaw tobacco use but have some type of exception such as staff smoking areas, the review found.
The trend is growing, Frick said, because the bans help save the states money on health care and prevent guards and inmates from being exposed to secondhand smoke on the job.
"These policies work once they are in effect," he said.
A gradual approach
Instead of a "cold turkey" approach, some prisons allowed their bans to phase in gradually, hoping that would create less of a stir among the prison populations.
In Virginia, inmates were notified in January 2009, more than a year before the ban launched, Traylor said.
"We already had eight facilities in our system that were either tobacco-free or had designated smoking areas for staff away from inmate areas," Traylor said. "These eight facilities have proven that a gradual process is possible."
The phase-in process for Virginia gave Braxton time to quit smoking. As for the prisoners, Braxton said he's pretty sure some of them stashed tobacco at the facility, but none has been caught smoking.
"I'm not having any issues with them at all," he said. "They hid some in the yard, but we have cameras, and I haven't seen anyone dig up any tobacco."
Ohio went tobacco-free March 1, 2009. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections has had to discipline a few staff members over tobacco use, said Julie Walburn, chief of communication.
"In the past year, we've disciplined 33 staff for violations in some form of the tobacco ban, but when we employ over 13,000 staff, that really isn't a demonstrative number," Walburn said. Tobacco products have become a popular item on the inmate contraband market, she said.
"We are used to dealing with contraband. This is just another type," Walburn said.
When Wyoming banned smoking in its prisons in 2006, it was more of an issue for staff than prisoners, said Melinda Brazzale, a spokeswoman for the Wyoming Department of Corrections.
"They did not break the rule, however," she said. "They were used to just walking out the door and smoking, and now they actually had to go across a road or out of the facility and be away from it."
Some opposition
Not all plans to ban prison smoking have been successful. Arizona attempted to ban smoking in its state prisons last year, but the legislation failed.
The bill's sponsor, Republican state Rep. Bill Konopnicki, said there are plans to reintroduce the bill.
Michael McFadden, a spokesman for the Citizens Freedom Alliance, which mostly focuses on government interference with private-property owners, said the group is concerned with what prison smoking bans mean.
"Bans on smoking in prisons are not really separate from such things as bans on beaches, bans in bars or bans in private apartments: They are all facets of a larger and very well-funded movement to ban smoking from all aspects of life," he said.
The American Civil Liberties U nion National Prison Project supports some bans, Director David Fathi said, because in some cases, smoking in prisons can be a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments."
"Just like prisoners have the right to drink clean water and eat edible food, prisoners have the right to breathe non-contaminated air," he said.
Braxton said he's glad he got the opportunity to see the benefits of not smoking, which have surfaced in the months since he quit.
"I can tell there's a big, big improvement in my health just in that short period," he said.
Contributing: Katharine Lackey, The News Leader, Staunton, Va Read
Inmates lighting up with the patch
Apr 5 2005
CALGARY - Prisoners at the Calgary Correctional Centre, no longer allowed to smoke in custody, are finding nicotine patches helpful - when they smoke them.
But because lighters and matches are not allowed, inmates are resorting to jamming a wire into an electrical outlet and using the resulting hot tip to light their smokes.
"One way or another, people are going to smoke," Rob Handleman, who served three months in Spy Hill for a traffic offence, said.
Handleman said with the six-month-old smoking ban in effect, prisoners have discovered they can scrape the nicotine from a patch and roll it with dried tea.
Dan MacLennan, president of the Alberta U nion of Provincial Employees, says his members have safety concerns about the make-shift cigarettes being lit from wires and electrical outlets.
"That spark can go right through to your lips, so there are some very dangerous ways, which have led to some shorting out of electrical panels and such," MacLennan said.
Tobacco-free, tea-less inmates lighting up carpet, wood chips
March 14, 2005
MAX MAUDIE
EDMONTON SUN Smoke 'em if you've got 'em. If you don't, smoke the carpet. Or maybe some wood chips whittled from a pencil. According to an inmate at the Edmonton Remand Centre, that's what inmates who crave a smoke have been forced to do since their canteens stopped selling tea. That's right - tea. "They use that outer layer of toilet paper, or bible paper and... they just open it up and sprinkle tea in like you were gonna roll a joint," said the inmate, who asked not to be named. And then they smoke it, of course. "It's gross, totally gross, but I think it soothes the psychological effect a little bit, just having smoke in your lungs," he said. Inmates call it 'teabacco.' If they're fortunate and can afford nicotine patches from the canteen - at $30.81 for a box of seven, according to the unnamed inmate - they'll pull apart the patch to get to the gummy nicotine substance inside. Inmates roll it into little balls and then press it into their teabacco smokes, getting 70 to 80 balls a patch. That's seven or eight smokes, said the inmate. But with no more tea, and the patch costing as much as it does, inmates are crawling the walls. The anonymous inmate - imprisoned for fraud and ID theft - said it's a real health concern. He said the tool of the trade for whittling and trimming is a set of nail clippers. "(Inmates are smoking) the bottom of the brooms, carpet fibres. It's kinda gross. (Wood shavings) from, like, pencils and stuff." Longtime remand guard Mike Rennich, now chairman of the Alberta U nion of Provincial Employees local representing guards at the Remand Centre, said "it's unhealthy to smoke (tea) - that's why they're removing it." Rennich seemed resigned to inmates smoking whatever they can get their hands on. "I mean, they're gonna try and find whatever they're gonna smoke to smoke. "They're smoking carpet and their smoking the bristles out of a broom. That's just their desperation to smoke something other than tobacco." http://www.canoe.ca/
How Prison Helped Me Kick My Smoking HabitPacific News Service, Commentary,
Dannie Martin, Sep 20, 2004
 MASON, TENNESSEE - I thought stopping a 50-year smoking habit was impossible. A pack a day of non-filter Camel cigarettes for five decades is hard to quit. Even after a doctor told me that on a chest X-ray my lungs looked like two dried prunes. I tried everything to stop: nicotine patches, Nicorette gum, hypnotism, monster willpower, you name it, I tried it, to no avail. The camel kept his nose in the tent. Then I was charged with violating parole and found out that the first jail I went to was a no-smoking facility. I stayed there a week without a cigarette. I was going nuts, but by the sixth and seventh day I had calmed down some. By then I would pass two or three hours without thinking about a smoke. After a week, The Corrections Corporation of America came and transported me to one of their privately-run prisons in Mason, Tennessee. It's also a no-smoking facility. I thought I'd see a bunch of inmates going crazy from nicotine withdrawal. I couldn't have been more wrong. There is something about being locked up and knowing that you can't smoke that has a calming effect on the nerves. Then again, tobacco is available here. I wasn't even settled in before a convict asked me if I wanted to buy a cigarette. He said that, actually, it was just some tobacco that I could roll myself. The price was three dollars, payable in items that we purchase here at the canteen. I asked him if I got a rolling paper with the deal, and he said "no." "But that's no problem," he told me. "There are plenty of Bibles here, and the pages make excellent rolling papers." I'm not a religious person, but books are icons to me - I've written several of them myself. Bibles are books, after all, and I couldn't possibly tear one up and smoke it. Besides that, at three dollars a stick, I can't afford enough smokes to keep me from wanting one, so I declined. Regular cigarettes sell here for fifty dollars a pack. Each cigarette is then broken down so that three rollups can be made from it. So a pack of cigarette brings one hundred eighty dollars in canteen items. Despite the high price, the demand always outstrips the supply. Someone's always looking to buy a cigarette. There aren't any matches in here but there are transistor radio batteries. The spark is made by applying steel wool and toilet paper to the radio battery. One convict told me he buys a pack of cigarettes for fifty dollars and smokes them all himself. He said it lasts him five or six days. "Quite a few of us do that," he told me. "It cuts down the chance of getting told on, and most of the men who sell smokes do get told on eventually." If a con is caught with tobacco, he goes straight to isolation. It's usually fifteen days for the first offense and thirty for the second. Ironically, sometimes a man is put in isolation for smoking by the guard who sold him the cigarettes. There was some excitement in the cellblock here a few nights ago when the police ran in and grabbed a guy accused of selling tobacco. They also detained an officer who was accused of bringing in the contraband and escorted him off the premises. We know the inmate is in isolation. We don't know the fate of the guard. One inmate who is broke sells his tray of food to save up enough money to buy cigarettes now and then. But the food is so bad that he can get only sixty cents a tray. So he has to sell five meals before he can smoke. I've seen times when I was glad to go hungry for a cigarette, but not that hungry. It's been two months for me now. Yesterday, a man offered me a drag from a Bible-page rollup. I told him: "I don't smoke." Man, it felt good saying that after fifty years. I never thought jail would do anything positive for me, but there's a no-smoking program here that works. I wouldn't advise it, though, until you've tried everything else. Martin is the co-author of "Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog" and the author of two published novels. |
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