We now know that ace will make sure never to be arrested in California.

Hope they triple staff those prisons during the transition, 'cause there are going to be a lot of irritable fuckers in one tight space.

A tin of chewing tobacco cost $11 a can in CA?! Whoa

$11!! Those commies! I'll bet there's a nice, healthy black market in dip outside of prisons, too. In fact, since it's "only" $4.45 in PA...

Yeah, the cost of living is getting so high in California that even the inmates are feeling the pinch...
Poor guys have to pay $200 per can...

WTF??!!

How do these scumbags have $200 to throw around in the first place???!!!

from selling drugs

They shouldn't let the inmates smoke. Prison life should be uncomrtable, and smoking is a luxruy. Plus, when the negative health effects set in, who pays for their care? The taxpayer

I'm a huge smokers' rights advocate but I'll agree with brak here. Smoking is a luxury and prisons aren't anywhere near as harsh as they should be, at least not in the right way. Everyone in prison should suffer equally.

Far more offensive was the MSNBC Connected segment today in which some NJ dipshits were trying to make a case for stopping law-abiding citizens smoking in their own fucking cars. Wannabe fascists make me sick.

By that logic, brak, we should feed them nothing but vegetarian diets and enforce mandatory fitness programs, and that's just the beginning. Newsflash for you, but prison life already *is* uncomfortable. Being a nanny state warden needn't be part of the package.

Furthermore, I'd wager that the money spent on additional medical costs are offset by the reduction in years of providing 24/7 room & board. If smoking actually resulted in a net savings, then perhaps we need to let them smoke as much as they want to.

Maybe if the health care costs were less than the room and board, I'd change my mind. But I'm not sure about that.

Smoking is a luxury though. I don't think there should be cable TV in prison either.

No smoking for prisoners, but let the guards smoke just to piss the prisoners off.

I smoked for more years than I'd care to mention and I think smoking should be banned in the prison system, if for no other reason that to save the taxpayers from footing the bill for sick inmates. We're already paying tens of millions for the cost of sick smokers now, if we can reduce that we (and they) will all be far better off.

I bought into all the same arguments to protect smoking before. But when I see through smoke free eyes how terrible the effects of smoking really are, I believe firmly that cigarettes should be illegal because they are, and have always been, an unsafe product. Someday they will be illegal and we'll all be better off without them.

I don't have a problem with this, if the people who actually work with the prisoners don't. Especially since we're paying for their treatment. (As for feeding them vegetarian diets for their health, that sounds like a fine idea to me.)

I do think that we should try to make some aspects of prison bearable. I'm in favor of access to good books and movies and whatnot, because I want them to be in a sane state of mind when they're released. Most of all, I think that the amount of violence and rape in prisons is intolerable. It disturbs me for humanitarian reasons, and it worries me when I think about people being released after years in such an environment.

If it sounds like I'm being soft on crime, let me counter that by saying that I think prison sentences for violent crimes are typically way too short.

72 cigarettes:

I'm an ex-smoker, too. Cigarettes are a plague on humanity.

I still don't really think that outlawing them for adults is the right answer, although I wish it were.

The most important thing is to prevent minors from getting them, since most people start smoking when they're in their teens. When I was young, the lobby of the diner right next to my high school had a cigarette machine we all used. This is the kind of thing which needs to be prevented.

People talk about the dangers of cigarettes mainly in terms of a shortened lifespan. But to be honest, that doesn't bother me much. What bothers me most is the years of needless agony prior to the early death. Many non-smokers live long lives feeling good much of the time, then they get sick and die, never having spent a huge amount of time hospitalized. But smokers often spend years in bed, in pain, suffering asphyxiation, before they die young. For me, it's not about the early death, it's about all the pain that precedes it.

Unless TV and movies have lied to me (and they never, ever do that), cigarettes are sorta the currency in prisons, right? The lubrication, if you will, ensuring the system works as well as it does.

If you yank 'em all out, won't they need to find another basic unit of exchange? Where do they go from there? Bricks? Severed testicles? Bibles?

Seriously. It's a head-scratcher.

Prison smoking? It's like getting your salad tossed by an ashtray.

Spongey's right. Lips that touch cigarettes will never touch my squeakhole.

SJKevin

Yeah, its only been three years for me and I've heard you're not out of the woods for 7-10 years!!! In Tom Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel there is a scence in which his brother dies of smoking and it is horrific. As to making cigarettes illegal, they are an unsafe product and always have been. If the government didn't make so much money on them they'd have been illegal 2o years ago. But eventually, they will be and we'll all be better off.

BTW - From the vantage point of a non-smoker when I see old movies now the thing that strikes me most about smokers is how often they smoke. They smoke one every fifteen minutes or so, all day every day! Going without a cigarette for half and hour to an hour used to seem a long time. Talk about addiciting!

Fortunately, this nanny state imposition took place AFTER Clint Eastwood filmed "The Dead Pool", which has one of the best EVER Dirty Harry scenes.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go rent it.

"Oh, you see that greaseball down there? He says that smoking causes cancer and that anyone who smokes as much as you do is one *dumb* son of a bitch."

rotfl.

Ban smoking in prisons, just give them heroin.

Aw jeez digitalbrownshirt, you beat me.
I was going to suggest an opium tube in every cell. Just for the lifers.
Make them nice and pliable and nonviolent.

How about curarie or ricin?

There is one important thing to remember about the ill effects of smoking. The majority of deaths come not from lung cancer but rather heart failure. A smoker is more likely to have a fatal DRT heart attack and never spend a prolonged period in a cancer ward nor collect Social Security benefits.

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article bemoaning the number of senior citizens behind bars with severe medical expenses. If we let those people have as many cigarettes as they like, for their sole use and not as trade goods, we could save a fortune by letting them off themselves.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/consumer/la-tm-oldcons26jun26,1,5821557.story

Yeah. let's force 'em to live nice loooooooooong lives so they can rip us off longer. Sheesh.

buncha old ladies in pantaloons.

No smoking in prison?

Gee, the next thing you know, they are gonna ban butt-sex in prison too...

Oh...

cool site