In prisons, tobacco now contraband


Feb. 28--A year after Ohio prisons instituted a cold-turkey smoking ban, taxpayers can expect to shell out a little less for medical care for inmates suffering from emphysema and other respiratory diseases.

But the ban -- which includes chewing tobacco and snuff -- also gave birth to a lucrative contraband market in state prisons. Sources said tobacco has become as valuable as marijuana, with a single cigarette selling for $10, a pack of cigarettes going for $200 and a can of loose tobacco for $300.

An indication of how hot a commodity tobacco has become came last month when officials uncovered a plan for a woman to secretly drop tobacco at the Governor's Residence in Bexley. Inmates working there planned to smuggle the tobacco back into the Pickaway Correctional Institution. The drop was scuttled by top State Highway Patrol officials.

Prison medical personnel said one out of three inmates with serious respiratory ailments, such as emphysema, bronchitis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, have shown marked improvement in the year since the ban took effect.

That led to lower use of inhalant drugs over a three-month period -- a savings of $90,000. However, the overall cost to the state rose slightly because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration forced drug companies to replace propellants in inhalers to prevent ozone damage. That increased the price to $40 per inhaler from $19.

Respiratory drugs represent six of the top 40 drugs purchased by prisons for inmates, costing about $4million per year.

Ohio prisons chief Ernie Moore said the positive health effect is "the reason we did this in the first place."

"It's been proven that tobacco use increases health-care costs. When taxpayers are paying for inmate health-care cost, it only made sense to eliminate smoking."

Ohio's was the 34th state prison system to ban smoking.

While he received some complaints about the ban (instituted by his predecessor, Terry Collins), Moore, himself a former smoker, said, "There are many staff and inmates who are happy because of it."

There has been an uptick in contraband problems in the 31 state prisons in the past year, Moore said. He added, "In our profession, we are always dealing with contraband. It's just a different contraband."

Prison rules don't distinguish tobacco from other contraband. There were 23,762 inmate contraband conduct reports from March 2009 to present, an increase of more than 5 percent compared with the same period the previous year.

Inmates who break the tobacco-ban rule can receive a written citation, or time in an isolation cell. Repeated offenses can lead to increasing an inmate's security level and possibly a transfer to a higher-security prison, prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn said.

Since the tobacco ban took effect on March 1, 2009, 44 corrections officers and other staff members have been cited for violations, state records show. Most violators received written reprimands, although a few were suspended for one or more days. An officer at Allen Correctional Institution in Lima was fired, but Walburn said that case involved multiple charges that didn't involve tobacco.

Both staff and inmates were given access to smoking-cessation programs. In addition, the state persuaded its supplier of medical prescriptions to open up the rules on the nicotine patch and other smoking-cessation drugs.

The union representing most prison employees is concerned that searching for contraband tobacco is creating more work for corrections officers already working in a pressure-cooker environment.

"We do believe when you create an additional black market, it is something else staff needs to track down, more work for prison staff," said Sally Meckling, spokeswoman for the Ohio Civil Service Employees association. "We can't forget we have a serious overcrowding issue.

"Yes, we have a concern about security," Meckling said. "It's just something else staff has to do at a time when they already have their hands full."

Meckling said the ban was not a surprise since the union was involved in discussions with prison administrators long before the rule took effect. However, she said the union does have a gripe: Inmates got better access to smoking-cessation programs than prison staff members did.

ajohnson@dispatch.com

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