Ban Makes Tobacco Prison Drug Of Choice

Cigarettes are like gold in Idaho prisons, so valuable that people risk careers and injuries to smuggle them.

In one example, a woman was caught scaling a prison’s razor wire-topped fence with 21 cartons in her backpack. Prison officials estimated inmates would have paid $21,000 for the booty.

A few guards also have joined the illegal trade. This fall, a female officer was fired after she admitted selling smokes.

“We do have a drug problem,” said Larry Wright, warden of the South Idaho Correctional Institution. “The drug of choice is tobacco.”

The black market developed soon after the Correction Board issued a no-smoking mandate a year ago. It hoped it would bring cleaner air and healthier inmates, and perhaps save the state on its annual $6.7 million inmate health-care bill.

The policy brought the prisons in line with a growing number of agencies nationwide. Since it began in Idaho, hundreds of the 4,100 inmates have abandoned smoking.

For the most part, the policy has been a success, even landing Correction Director James Spalding an appearance on a national news program.

Still, many inmates dislike the idea, and that has made it hard to enforce.

“I think it’s lame,” inmate Kevin Elam said. “There would be less fights if the ban was lifted. We’d all get along better.”

Correction officials acknowledge anti-smoking rules can create tension. Inmates busted for smoking violations generally do extra janitorial work or temporarily lose privileges, such as watching television or receiving visitors.

Meting out that punishment, though, takes guards away from other duties.

Inmates usually are more savvy. They huddle in the exercise yard or blow smoke out the bathroom vents.

They also employ numerous schemes to import cigarettes through all the security. Some are as simple as relatives and friends tossing a pack over the fence. Cigarettes also come in through food trays, or visitors who hide them.

The payoff is big. Cigarettes generally sell for $5 to $10 each.

Inmates and prison officials said the drug problem is not as widespread as cigarettes. Thin marijuana cigarettes may not even fetch as much as the tobacco variety on the black market, generally netting about $7 each, Quinton said.