Prison Smoking Ban Likely to Bring a Pack of Changes
FOLSOM, Calif. — Doing time in a California state prison won't be quite the same beginning Friday. All inmates, once given tobacco and matches along with their prison blues and toothbrush, will now be forbidden to smoke.
Born of legislation passed last year, the tobacco ban was sold as a boon that would offer a big drop in prison healthcare costs and clean air for inmates and officers who didn't like to light up. The Republican assemblyman who pushed the ban last year predicted that it would save at least $265 million a year.
Judging from the experience of other states -- and reports from a few California prisons that are already smoke-free -- health costs will go down. But their experience also shows that forcing inmates to kick the habit has downsides.
One is the birth of a black market for tobacco -- and the smuggling, extortion and violence that accompany it. With about half of the state's 163,000 inmates addicted to nicotine, tobacco demand will prompt scores of entrepreneurs to begin selling the newest contraband behind bars, prison officials say.
Rising tensions are also a worry.
When Maine banned smoking in prison in 2000, assaults quadrupled.
At Folsom State Prison east of Sacramento, where the canteen stopped selling tobacco earlier this year, an underground economy is now in full swing. A tin of Bugler -- which retailed for about $11 in May -- now goes for $200 on the cellblock, convicts say. Lighters, matches and rolling papers command similarly inflated prices.
And inmates say a network of tobacco brokers, middlemen and enforcers -- assigned to ensure that prisoners pay their tobacco debts -- is taking shape.
"It's crazy, you know what I mean?" said Michael Johnson, 45, a bespectacled inmate from Stockton struggling to kick a 20-cigarette-a-day habit. "Tobacco is gonna be more valuable than dope."
Inmates aren't the only ones who will be forced to snuff out their smokes. More than 30,000 employees in the Department of Corrections' 33 prisons and camps must also abide by the new law.
Unlike workers in many other jobs, most corrections employees are tied to posts deep within the bowels of prisons and cannot easily step off the property for a cigarette break. Folsom's acting warden, Matt Kramer, said that although many nonsmoking employees welcomed the ban, those who enjoyed a midday puff would have it rough.
