Smoking Ban does not Protect Prisoners

Published on January 12th, 2009 05:57

Smoking ban declined the smoking in the U.S. but not in prisons, according to a recent study. In American prisons, tobacco is a way of life. As a result, millions of prisoners risk smoking-related heart and lung diseases, liver problems and diabetes. More than 2.3 million of U.S. prisoners smoke, according to a recent research. A new research describes a treatment that could help prisoners stop smoking: a program similar to those offered to people in the general population.

During the past half-century, anti-smoking campaigns and innovations like nicotine replacement patches helped bring American tobacco usage rates down to about 20 percent. In prison, though, non-smokers are still in the minority, between 70 and 85 percent of prisoners smoke. Ross Kauffman, a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University, said that tobacco is integrated into the prison culture that's why is very hard to make prisoners to quit.

Despite their addiction, approximately 70 percent of smoking prisoners say they want to quit. Cigarette smoking in prison is more dangerous because most prisoners smoke hand-rolled, unfiltered cigarettes which increase the risks of their health. Researchers showed that non-smokers living long hours indoors exacerbate the effects of secondhand smoking. They found that the nicotine concentration in a prison living area was 12 times the amount in an average smoker's home.

For prisoners second-hand smoking leads to high rates of serious illness and even death. And thanks to non-smoking prisoners, states became aware of the health and economic effects of smoking. When they banned cigarettes, prisons generally offered only limited programs to help prisoners quit, so the vast majority of prisoners kept on smoking, finding ways to illegally procure tobacco. Researchers think that anti-smoking programs would help a huge number of prisoners.