No smoking! Convicts go cold turkey

Smoking is the least of all dangers facing an inmate.
He can be raped, wounded in a prison brawl, killed by another inmate; he can lose his wife, children and friends; even under the best of circumstances, his future is bleak.
And we want to turn this guy into a sweet, healthy-conscious New Ager?
This is like telling a starving man to stay away from non-organically
grown produce.
The anti-smoking lobby, mixing lofty ideals and authoritarian impulses, as most crusaders do, want inmates to take programs to help them break the habit.
Why would a method that often fails when applied to well-adjusted citizens be successful in the tense environment of prison life?
Depriving inmates of cigarettes is an imposition of middle class values on a population that is largely under-educated and thus, as statistics show, more likely to smoke.
Inmates are paying their dues and their cell is their home. How far can the state invade someone's privacy?
And what's next? A ban on fantisies and masturbation?
Can prisons be transformed into peaceful, healthy havens? Probably not.
If inmates receive unnecessary, cruel treatment, the backlash might be worse than whiffs of second-hand smoke.
Thomas Laprade
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Canada

That seems to be "cruel and unusual" punishment for people who have ABSOLUTELY NO CHOICE. Not being very aware of situatuins in prisons except what I see on media reports, I see nothing but trouble ahead. We should have these people who came up with this ban to go to the prisons to enforce it, insteads of pushing all their ideas on other people (guards) to do THEIR dirty work. That's being really irresponsible. Do they really believe that no one is smoking in any bars? The only good thing is that it should be well publicised to maybe deter future crime.

fernando luvs dieter

The legislators sure didn't take their time to consider all this law's ramifications before they enacted it - a rush to political correctness.

In marvelous Minnesota there have been tobacco related "deaths" in the prison system, The behavior control commissars of the state have created another black market, A single cigarette costs $75.00

" A healthy criminal is a more proficient criminal"

'I'm gonna sell you for a pack of smokes.'

Isn't prison more or less the inmate's "home"?

I thought people were still allowed to smoke in their own home!

I hope not (for the sake of the corrections officers), but I think this may backfire ...