subject: A Smoking Ban Even In Prisons [print this page] Approximately half of U.SApproximately half of U.S. States decided to prohibit smoking even in their prisons not only in public places.
They decided to approve such a new legislation because it had good results when smoking was banned in bars and restaurants. The previous anti-smoking law ameliorates the heath of people in bars and saves health care costs too.
The main goals of this new decision are to improve prisoners' health and save insufficient tax dollars. In fact this ban doesnt prevent prisoners from smoking, but it only creates whole directions of unpremeditated results.
But not all bans had good result. For example prohibition of drugs doesn't work in society or in bars. In spite of 40 years of a fight against drugs, today marijuana and other dangerous drugs are as accessible as ever. It is common knowledge that drug use is growing in prison. However it was not stopped in prisons.
Of course the smoking ban will not stop smoking and will not make it to disappear. It just will control only the cigarettes market which rose because the tobacco products prices were increased.
For example California banned smoking in prisons and after an investigation researchers found an increase of black market where a pack of cigarettes could be sold up to $125. In the result the drug market around cigarettes becomes as violent as the drug market around illegal drugs.
If tobacco use, like other drug use, is unavoidable, then more and more people will become addicted to it and they would not quit so easier. Thats mean that more smokers will be punished for illicit smoking and drug use. We know that people behind bars are already excessively punished for illicit drug use.
The better method will be if the state would offer incarcerated smokers educational resources and more helping and useful information if they are interested in quitting.
The cost of supplying inhabitants and prisoners with nicotine gum and nicotine patches would be more economical than adding more penalty approvals to their already unnecessary violation against those who continue their bad habit near bars.
So, regulation is more efficient at encouraging safety and health than prohibition.
Federal ban challenged
The Federal Bureau of Prisons, in making its facilities smoke-free last week, tried to ease the change by offering smoking-cessation programs to prisoners and inmates, along with a supply of nicotine patches. Inmates must pay for their patches. The guards may get them for free.
The federal correctional employees union fought the smoking ban by arguing that prison guards working long shifts in locked-down facilities would not have the luxury of stepping outside for a smoke.
The union took its demands for indoor smoking areas to a binding arbitration panel in 2001 and lost.
The panel said employees could smoke in guard towers and prison vehicles, but only if they were alone.
Aubrey Frances, who worked on the arbitration case, estimates that maybe half of federal corrections workers are smokers, and thousands will be frustrated by the new ban.
