The same could be true here. I don’t have access to tobacco harm reduction (THR) strategy meetings. If I did, I would be urging the targeting of prison policies that are vulnerable because they cost money, as well as lives.

Washington State is in a desperate financial position right now, its Democratic leadership under pressure from the feds. Education is being squeezed, among other things.

Our Department of Corrections (DOC) has been underfunded for years. Meanwhile, prisoners (like their wider communities) smoke at very high rates—often engaging in unsafe practices to get around prison smoking bans, or else resuming smoking immediately upon release. This imposes higher health care costs on the state.

One policy change could help address multiple issues: giving DOC the chance to be more financially sustainable by selling specially designed nicotine vapes in commissary, as has been done on a smaller scale in some jails in the United States.

In those examples, vapes are purchased by the state at low cost and sold to incarcerated people at a mark-up. People who become accustomed to getting nicotine in this safer way are likely to bring the habit with them to the streets after release, with further influence on behaviors in their families and communities. Meanwhile, the mark-up profits can be used by the institution to provide maintenance and programming—two things for which all Washington prisons have a severe need.

As author and THR expert Jacob Grier pointed out when I spoke with him recently, prisons could be a politically palatable environment for this sort of effort because concerns over youth use—a stick used to beat THR around the world—would not apply. Everyone here is an adult.

Washington prisons making a clear policy distinction between smoking and vaping would be one small step to changing broader perceptions.

It would be a clear-cut win on all sides, and the policy change needs to be argued in court or legislatively addressed.

Many people will write off this cause. They will say that it’s a small portion of society, that it’s not worth the effort or time. That the payoff won’t be big enough to justify the work.

I disagree, and not just because I am a prisoner. I disagree because I have seen the effect that small policy wins have. Usually they open the door in other areas.

Wins also help define the terms and understanding of an issue. Tobacco harm reductionists continually fight the conflation of vaping and smoking. Washington prisons making a clear policy distinction between the two would be one small step to changing broader perceptions.

But how to do it? One suggestion that’s been made is that prisoners write their local representatives. While this can be effective for others, it doesn’t tend to work for us. Washington prisoners cannot vote; why would government representatives read our letters when we’re not actually their constituents?

Any bid to bring sanctioned vaping to prisons must be a team effort. We must have representation on the outside.

That approach would carry risks for us, too. If our letters in support of a policy campaign are considered too similar, the DOC can deem them evidence of a “group demonstration.” This is strictly forbidden on the inside—so much so, that if more than two people exercise together during yard or gym, they will break it up. Continuing after a verbal warning will result in an infraction, and possibly an investigation. This is supposedly an “anti-gang” tactic.

Letter-writing campaigns on the street are often accompanied by some sort of protest or public gathering. This is the worst thing someone can do inside. Do not call for a “sit down” or “strike” or “protest,” or anything along those lines! No matter how peaceful you are, you will be met with violence.

These factors explain why a vaping-policy victory can’t be achieved from the inside alone. Any bid to bring sanctioned vaping to prisons must be a team effort. We must have representation on the outside.

We can still do much of the work here: writing arguments or researching policy and law, for instance, as well as testifying to our lived experience. But without someone outside to connect these arguments to administrators or legislators, we will remain unheard.

Prisoners can be a powerful voice when supported. In Washington State, prisoners have united around legislative changes in sentencing reform. LOOK 2JUSTICE, for example, is a nonprofit run by prisoners, with an outside board. It lobbies legislators around changing sentencing in our state.

THR researchers have a vital role to play too, when studies typically ignore us.

It is not unthinkable that the same could be done for THR. But organizations focused on THR seldom reach out to prisoners. Starting a new organization is possible, and running it would require a unified effort from prisoners and free people. With the right outside support, vaping policy could join the rich history of prisoners impacting unjust laws.

“Nothing about us without us” is a basic principle of harm reduction. Prisoners are a large constituency with a direct stake in THR, but our isolation prevents us being part of the solution.

The outside THR community needs to start somewhere. Organizations can begin to include prisoners in their work through the newsletters and other materials that some produce—printing and mailing them to us, instead of keeping them purely online. Even if we received just one copy, I know from experience that prisoners would pass it around and consume it.

Organizations with lawyers could reach out to state and federal prisoners to ask what we call “legal beagles” (prison litigators) for thoughts on local policy and law. Steps like these would cost relatively little time or money, but would go a long way toward including us in the conversation.

THR researchers have a vital role to play too, when studies typically ignore us. They could conduct surveys using snail mail or, in some cases, the electronic messaging services provided to prisoners.

Prisoners have critical contributions to make to THR, and we should be central to the movement’s focus. I’m asking the rest of the THR community to step up.

I would love to team up with a researcher to produce a survey of prisoners’ smoking habits before, during and after their incarceration. The importance of such evidence should be obvious, and could underpin efforts to bring vapes or other THR options to prisons as a public health measure.

If any of those roles sound like they could be a fit for you, you can contact me through Filter, or by using the mailing details under this article. I hope to hear from you.

My role as a THR fellow for Filter, supported by Knowledge-Action-Change, is an example of meeting a prisoner where they’re at. Though I quit smoking long ago, I  have done harm reduction work around drugs and sex for decades; these organizations brought me to the THR space, and what I’ve learned here makes me determined to do more. Prisoners have critical contributions to make to THR, and we should be central to the movement’s focus. I’m asking the rest of the THR community to step up.

 
Photograph by Kate Ter Haar via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0 

The post To Bring Tobacco Harm Reduction to Prisons, We Need Outside Allies appeared first on Filter.

Harm reduction was a different thing in the early ’90s; we didn’t even call it that yet. The closest you’d get to publicly acceptable harm reduction was maybe the “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk” campaign. Even giving out free condoms to high-schoolers was controversial. Giving out free syringes to people who injected drugs was something the public hadn’t really heard of.

The Thurston County Syringe Services Program in Olympia opened as a pilot project in 1993, but that wasn’t the beginning of syringe distribution there. Ask anyone who was on the streets downtown in the early ’90s and they’ll tell you they got clean rigs from Olympia’s one-man syringe service program, Long Hair Dave.

Dave was a local legend, someone whose whole life was about bringing direct services to those of us on the streets. But the first time I met him, in 1992, I knew nothing about him and didn’t trust him at all. He was a pretty eccentric guy, to me at least—he had this big hat and long coat with buttons all over it; he rolled his own cigarettes—but the reason I was suspicious was that he was giving out syringes. We were standing on 4th Ave, right on the main drag, and he just handed my friend Tony a new syringe like it was nothing. 

The HIV and AIDS epidemic was in full swing, but you needed a documented medical condition to legally possess syringes. Dave brought them to us anyway. That first day we talked for a while, and he gave me his phone number and said if I needed syringes I could call him anytime.

He probably meant that as more of a figure of speech, but when I literally called him up in the middle of the night he didn’t complain. He usually gave out syringes one or two at a time, but pretty soon he started giving me more so he could get a decent night’s sleep. 

Long Hair Dave in downtown Olympia in 1993

Dave was good at meeting people where they were at. He used to come down to the train access tunnel where we slept, but he’d respect our space and not go inside. Just check on us from the entrance and hand us some condoms and bleach kits, and swap new needles for used ones. He lived the principles of harm reduction before concepts like that were written or talked about. He did the work because he believed in it.

If someone was thinking about trying to get into treatment, Dave was right there to talk to them about it. But he never told us we needed to get clean. He never told us what we needed, period. He listened, and then he tried to help as best he could.

That summer, Dave was the one who told me I had HIV. The health department outreach team who’d tested me couldn’t find me, but they knew Dave could. He sat down with me in his little office at the old Bread & Roses shelter and told me what was up. 

We talked a lot. He gave me a lot more information about how the virus is actually transmitted. That was when it really clicked for me why it was so important to not share needles. There’s a good chance I already had HIV by the time I met Dave, but while I’d mostly been using clean rigs since I met him I was still sharing sometimes. After that day I stopped, and I was able to do that because of Dave. He helped make sure I always had clean rigs, as well as a supply of condoms.

I came and saw him quite a bit over the next few weeks. Even though we all assumed I was going to die pretty soon, he didn’t just talk to me about not spreading the virus to others; he also shared information about living with HIV. I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for Dave. I can say that and really mean it.

I’ve been in prison since 1995. Dave wrote me a couple of times, even sent books—he founded the Olympia chapter of Books to Prisoners—but I can’t really speak to any part of his life or work that’s more recent than that. What I can tell you is that over my years in prison I’ve met more than one person who remembers Dave, and everyone always has a story about how he helped them when they were in trouble, or went out of his way to connect them to services they needed.

He didn’t approach life like a popularity contest. He didn’t care about getting credit for the work he did. He just did what was needed for the people who needed it.

Image (cropped) via Long Hair David/YouTube

The post Remembering Long Hair Dave, Early Champion of Sterile Syringe Outreach appeared first on Filter.

A great recommendation, but it was hard. It took a long time, sometimes ruined your plunger and required me to carry a bunch of other stuff to do it.

In 1992, after I’d tested positive for HIV, a program in Olympia, Washington, helped me do more to prevent HIV transmission to others. It gave me access to sterile equipment.

Bleaching was difficult. Just using a new rig, on the other hand, was not only a more failsafe method—it was easy.

I began to use new rigs for myself and carry them for everyone else, too. It was easy to do this. We all preferred using new rigs. No extra paraphernalia, and it didn’t get in the way of using. This choice was made easy for me, and I helped make it easy for others.

Harm reduction is most effective when adoption of a resource or practice is easy, convenient and even enjoyable.

Harm reduction needs to meet people “where they’re at.” It needs to give people the things they need to take control of their health and wellbeing and reduce risks in their life. And it does this most effectively when adoption of a resource or practice is easy, convenient and even enjoyable—and at the very least, not unpleasant and hostile.

That’s why overdose prevention centers, for instance, emphasize being welcoming spaces. Places where you can not only use a drug safely, pick up necessary supplies or obtain valuable referrals, but also stop for a chat, share a meal, create art or otherwise build community.

Similarly, at syringe service programs every effort is taken to make the environment comfortable. Pop-up SSP are located as much as possible in safe places where patrons will feel at ease, not surveilled, in areas they already frequent. At brick-and-mortar SSP the decor, the whole setting and the ethos are ideally designed to help people feel welcome, safe and good about the choices they are making.

This “pleasure” principle extends to all harm reduction—tobacco harm reduction included.

There’s substantial evidence that vapes, pouches and other safer nicotine products are effective in helping people who want to quit smoking. Two big factors in why they work are that they are easy to use and enjoyable.

If a fruity-flavored vape gives people pleasure, meaning they’d never want to return to smoking, why wouldn’t we prioritize making the preferred option available?

A large majority of adults who quit smoking with vapes prefer flavors other than tobacco—mostly fruity ones. People like sweet, fruity flavors in lots of contexts. But many who formerly smoked also say they don’t want to be constantly reminded of combustible tobacco when they vape.

Disposable vapes, meanwhile, are often demonized but represent the most low-barrier vaping option. You just pick them up and inhale, and this ease of use can be critical for someone who smokes, has never tried vaping and has no idea what a mod is.

If a harm reduction resource is both much safer than the alternative and more satisfying, pleasant or convenient to use, that’s ideal. If a fruity-flavored vape gives people pleasure, meaning they would never want to return to smoking—while for some, a tobacco-flavored vape isn’t more enjoyable than a cigarette—why wouldn’t we prioritize making the preferred option available? More lives can be saved that way.

Youth use, and the notion that flavors entice youth, is always the reason given for restrictions and bans, of course. It’s cited in a current effort to ban flavored nicotine products where I live, in Washington State.

But unlike the cigarettes they can replace—for all ages—vapes and pouches aren’t killing people. It’s curious how with certain risky products that come in a wide range of flavors—alcohol, sugary drinks—lawmakers in contrast see age restrictions or parental discretion as adequate, mostly taking the view that outright bans would be draconian.

People lose their ability to think rationally when it comes to children.

The youth thing reminds me of the 1990s, when there was a big push to get condoms in schools. Teachers brought people in to talk to classes, and I did that work for a while. The goal was to teach about risks from sex, and about proper condom use to help prevent HIV transmissions and pregnancy.

Many people back then objected, arguing that this was a sort of tacit encouragement for underage people to go have sex. The point, of course, was that many were having sex already, or soon would, and they deserved to know how to protect themselves.

Some kids will use nicotine. If we accept that reality, we should surely teach that while you don’t have to use it, if you do, some options are much safer than others. But people lose their ability to think rationally when it comes to children.

Again, supporting safer choices that people are making is important. When people don’t feel good about what they’re doing, they generally go back to what they know, even if they don’t feel good about that.

Sometimes people just need a bit of help in managing their lives. For years, everyone told me I needed to do fewer drugs. Sometimes I would. Tapering the amount of meth I used. Saving money, restoring balance in my life. Sometimes I would swap one substance for another. I would always rely on cannabis to help manage my other substances.

I was able to make adjustments because I enjoyed what I was doing. Because I felt good about my choices. Ultimately, when I was ready, I quit drugs.

It was hard. But It was also notable that sometimes something as simple as how I used a substance helped. Stopping injecting and maybe parachuting or snorting for a while could have a huge effect on how much I used.

The through-line here is that all of these management tools were things I liked. They still gave me the pleasure I needed. I was able to make adjustments because I enjoyed what I was doing. Because I felt good about the choices I was making. Ultimately, when I was ready, I quit using drugs.

In Sweden, where uptake of snus, a safer, non-combustible tobacco product, has led the country to the brink of “smoke-free” status, snus is sold in appetizing flavors at outlets that resemble chocolate shops.

If we offer people vapes—but only some vapes that many find less palatable or convenient, with a message that these shouldn’t be used for pleasure—that sabotages harm reduction potential.

Consider how we offer another resource to reduce drug-related harms in the United States. Methadone is available, but only in cold, carceral clinics where surveillance and punishment are the norms. This self-defeating setup dampens access to a lifesaving drug. It leads some people who use opioids to conclude, understandably, that they’d rather take their chances with the high-risk street supply.

In the effort to reduce smoking-related disease and death, which way will we go? 

Photograph (cropped) by Jacqueline Munguía via Unsplash

The post When Harm Reduction Is Easy and Enjoyable, It’s More Effective appeared first on Filter.

“Mom smoked Viceroys back then,” he told Filter. “She had a drawer full of those coupons that came with each pack. She never spent the coupons but I remember using them when I ran out of money playing Monopoly. She said I was a little cheater when I tried to use them to pay rent.”

In 2015, when Barnett got out of prison, he went home to see his mother, Gloria. “She sat at the kitchen table, a smoke in one hand and a mask in the other. I asked her what she was doing and she told me it was her breathing treatment.”

“There was a smoke burning in the ashtray when her lungs collapsed.”

In retrospect, he knows he shouldn’t have been surprised. “She’d been living with emphysema, COPD and asthma for a long time. It was a gradual thing—she didn’t just get ill one day, she just kept getting worse.”

Gloria died on February 23, 2023. She was 71. “There was a smoke burning in the ashtray when her lungs collapsed,” Barnett said.

It wasn’t the first time smoking had killed someone in his family. Years earlier, in 2004, his grandmother, Bettie, had died at 77 from emphysema and COPD. She’d smoked a pack and a half a day for most of her life. When the doctors told her she needed an oxygen concentrator  to breathe, she quit smoking cold-turkey. She lived on supplemental oxygen for 10 years before she finally passed.

Barnett received that news inside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, called Lucasville by the prisoners held there. “It was the hardest hit I’d ever taken up till then.”

He still smoked himself at the time—this was before Ohio prisons banned it. In those days he ran a football ticket, an unauthorized gambling operation. Cigarettes were the main currency. A patron would purchase his picks for a number of packs of cigarettes. If he hit, he’d get a 10-to-one return on his investment.

Like many other prisoners, he immediately took up the habit again upon his release.

Despite his grandmother’s death in 2004, Barnett did not quit smoking until 2010, after the prison ban came in. But like many other prisoners, he immediately took up the habit again upon his release in 2015.

His mother, Gloria, and stepfather, Skip, had both continued to smoke throughout. During his incarceration Gloria became ill. First asthma set in, and really affected her mobility. Soon COPD and emphysema took hold of her lungs. Gloria began to use a mask to breathe, just as her mother, Bettie, had done before her.

When he eventually saw his mother in this condition, Barnett advised her that if she didn’t quit smoking, she’d die just like grandma. But she’d heard it all before. She’d tried to use nicotine gum as a substitute—she even tried vaping—but the pull just wasn’t the same for her.

Vapes are among the most effective smoking-cessation tools. But even so, they aren’t the option most suited to everyone. People also often have to persevere for a while, trying different devices, nicotine strengths and flavors, before they can permanently switch.

And as for Barnett telling his mother she should quit for health reasons when he’d recently started smoking again himself, well, it just didn’t have much impact.

In 2021, when Gloria had become so ill she couldn’t get around by herself, her husband, Skip, retired to take care of her and be around if she needed help. Skip was a working man. Drove a truck his whole life. But this was important.

Two months after he’d retired, his cough deepened. He was diagnosed with lung cancer.

This news was not easy for Barnett to deal with. He had returned to prison, this time here in Washington State, about a year previously. His father had retired to take care of his mother. Now, who was going to take care of both of them?

“It says right on the pack, smoking will kill you.” But it doesn’t look as if knowing this will cause him to make changes in his own life.

Forced by the state into abstinence from tobacco products, Barnett didn’t even have a good cigarette to calm his nerves.

“It was 10 months to the day after I lost my mother that my dad died: December 23, 2023,” he said. “Smoking is deadly. It says right on the pack, smoking will kill you.”

But at the moment, it doesn’t look as if knowing this will cause him to make changes in his own life.

Though Barnett had already learned, in the hardest possible ways, of the harms of cigarettes, he didn’t know—not unambiguously, at least not until I told him so—that vapes are far safer.

When he was free he vaped cannabis, and enjoyed vaping for this purpose. “But I like smoking,” he concluded. “When I get out, I’ll buy some Winstons, or Pall Mall non-filters, and smoke.”

At the time of our conversation, nothing I said changed his mind.

Harm reduction knowledge of any sort doesn’t really reach prisoners. The walls that keep us in also serve to keep information out. Tobacco harm reduction information is no exception—in fact, it’s particularly unlikely to get through.

Some states, like Washington, have begun to allow classes that cover bloodborne pathogens, for instance—and there’s some communication, though not enough, about overdose and disease transmissions.

Prisoners, in their minds, don’t smoke—so we don’t need to educate them about it, right?

But no one talks about tobacco harm reduction. That’s in part because many prison authorities have banned all nicotine products and see it as a win, because now prisoners, in their minds, don’t smoke—so we don’t need to educate them about it, right?

They would have seen it as a win when Ohio’s ban forced Barnett to quit in 2010, six years after his grandmother died and over a decade before his parents died. His only way to continue smoking then would have been to buy tobacco at hugely inflated prices on the illicit market that the ban produced, risking the debt and violence that surrounds contraband tobacco in prisons.

But the ban didn’t come with help to quit smoking. It didn’t come with any information about smoking, or information about the safer nicotine options that help millions of people to quit cigarettes and stay quit. It just came.

Because of that failure, when Barnett releases in two years, he plans to start smoking again the day he gets out. That’s what happened last time, even after five years of enforced abstinence. Not even family tragedy prevented it.

But it is preventable. Simple steps could transform the lives of thousands of people like him. If prisons provided clear and accurate information about tobacco harm reduction options, and allowed use of products like vapes and pouches, it would have a profound effect.

Prisoners have a saying: What you do while you’re inside is what you’re going to do when you get out. This is about forming healthier habits and behaviors. We are literally a captive audience. I don’t smoke, but so many people in prison do. We have a manifest need to hear a lifesaving message. And word of mouth could carry that message into the free world.

Photograph by Doomok, J via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Smoking Killed His Family. He’ll Still Smoke When He Leaves Prison. appeared first on Filter.

Almost all prison smoking bans rely on the social stigma of smoking in order to reach a little further and ban vaping, too. Here in Washington State, vaping is not covered by state law that bans smoking in public indoor spaces and workplaces. State law actually authorizes local authorities to create their own rules on indoor vaping, except in the case of schools. A good legal argument could win the right for prisoners to vape or use smokeless tobacco products.

But why? So many people say that once prisoners have been made to quit cigarettes, we shouldn’t let them start up on nicotine again.

First of all, the data show that people who come to prison don’t tend to quit the substances they use—often not while they’re inside, and certainly not permanently. I know this from experience in my community, though I don’t use nicotine or other drugs myself. The fact that people released from prison are at vastly higher risk of overdose than the general population is the starkest illustration.

It makes sense to offer prisoners the chance to develop a safer practice of nicotine use. Like many habits acquired in prison, it’s one they might very well take back to the streets.

Prisoners—at least those who can’t afford the inflated prices of illicit prison markets—just take a forced, temporary break from the substances they use. That includes smoking.

From a purely harm reduction standpoint it makes sense to offer these prisoners the chance to develop a new, safer practice of nicotine use. Like many habits acquired in prison, it’s one they might very well take back to the streets with them. If so, they’d be likely to live longer, healthier lives.

Prisoners, I believe, would respond positively to vapes’ introduction after some initial adjustment. My harm reduction work has taught me that it’s just a question of having the right conversations, and finding the right cultural bypasses.

A particular strain of toxic masculinity exists in US men’s prisons. If it’s not “manly,” it’s “queer” or “bitch-made.” Most of the men I know here think vaping is a “sissy” thing, which “real men” don’t do.

Of course, many of them have done it when, say, cannabis was involved, or when that was the only way they could get the nicotine hit. The availability of that hit would trump the cultural resistance, and the product would become “masculinized” as it became widespread. They’d easily make that choice.

Commercial entities already exist to serve the market. The best known example is Crossbar. In 2012, the company’s founder Jamie Mosley, the elected jailer of Laurel County, Kentucky, noted that his detainees became aggressive and volatile when forced to stop smoking during their stay. He then purchased 1,000 vapes for sale at commissary.

The number of fights at the facility reportedly fell as soon as vapes were introduced. I would expect the same in any prison or jail—due to both sparing people nicotine withdrawal, and undercutting the violent illicit tobacco market. But cell searches in Kentucky soon indicated that some people were using the hard plastic casings to make shanks, so the vapes were pulled from commissary.

Mosley then designed a vape specifically for carceral settings—using soft plastic casing, transparent and with serial numbers to dissuade tampering and facilitate tracking. By 2020, Crossbar vapes were reportedly available at 33 prisons and jails—still only a tiny fraction of over 6,000 such facilities in the US.

Sure, there may be non-optimal things about this story, like the insider profit motive and a feature that limits inhalation time. But it is safer nicotine access in places where there was none.

We ought to be able to organize a purposeful effort. The need is clear. Experienes have shown it can be done. And most prison vape policies are a legal overreach.

The real lesson to me is how former prisoners have repeatedly contacted Crossbar, seeking to obtain vapes after they’ve been released (that’s according to Mosley, but I don’t doubt it when it fits all we know about switching to vapes and about habits acquired in prisons and jails).

If something like that can happen almost by accident, we ought to be able to organize a purposeful effort to greater effect. The need is clear. The Crossbar experience—and the United Kingdom—have shown it can be done. And most prison vape policies are a legal overreach.

The profit motive could also be helpful in practical terms. Crossbar reportedly sells its vapes to commissary companies for around $3. But prisons and jails sell them at up to $15 or $16. The markup is a hardship for prisoners, but an incentive for authorities and their commercial partners.

One suggestion I’ve made in discussions about this with my fellow prisoners is that vape markups could contribute to programs. Here at Washington Corrections Center, we have very few educational or cultural activities, to the obvious detriment of everyone. Lack of funding is blamed. But a fund created by vape sales could help cover personnel required for valuable programming and events.

In many ways, then, this effort could be a real benefit. Though the greatest benefit is showing people in prison, those being released and their communities that vaping is a much safer way of using nicotine.

This doesn’t just happen. People will need to see the benefit and decide to contribute. It’s time, legal advice, effort. Organizing toward a real goal. But the incentives are there for quite a lot of groups to participate.

Vape shops and manufacturers who have a hard time dealing with authorities could see changes at the state-prison scale yield a more favorable climate. Anti-smoking activists could see a reduction in cigarette purchases by populations that smoke heavily. Harm reductionists in general could find a route into a wider conversation, and really, this is a pretty nailed-on example of what harm reduction is.

Compelling the courts to rule on this matter would be a win for prisoners, for their families, for harm reduction. For everyone—which sort of hurts me a little because it includes the authorities, with  whom I don’t exactly agree most of the time.

Photograph via Picryl/Public Domain

The post Time for a Concerted Push to Get Vapes in All Prisons  appeared first on Filter.

I’ve been doing it for years here in prison, around drugs and HIV, though it took me a while to internalize that harm reduction was what it was.

Here, there is nothing legal about sexual contact between prisoners, and condoms are considered contraband. People still have sex.

The same goes for a wide variety of banned drug use. There is no policy that says folks can get clean rigs and Narcan. People still do drugs.

In these areas, I share my knowledge and experience so others who come in here suffer fewer harms. And hopefully, some of that knowledge carries with them as practice to the street.

Lately, I’ve been exploring the inclusion of tobacco harm reduction in all my conversations and efforts. Here, bans have made tobacco completely illegal. That doesn’t make it unavailable, but it does make it expensive. Tobacco right now costs about $10 for a quantity that would fill a regular cigarette outside. At least one person committed a felony in order for you to get it. Possessing it can earn an infraction that will move back your release date. Depending on how often you’ve been caught, they may decide to do even worse.

We have none of the “appropriate, affordable and acceptable” products that advocates demand in the free world. But still, harm reduction can exist.

In these circumstances, people in prison often use other highly risky substances in place of tobacco (namely “spice”).

All safer nicotine products are also illegal, and unlike tobacco they’re pretty much impossible to find. So we have none of the  “appropriate, affordable and acceptable” products that tobacco harm reduction advocates demand in the free world.

But still, harm reduction can exist. Some of the ways tobacco is used here are more dangerous than others. And there are many times when the regular harms of smoking are far from the most acute risk.

I’ll give you an example. The guards are banned from smoking too, but they are allowed to chew tobacco on the premises, and many do. When they’re done, they spit it out on the sidewalk or in the garbage cans. Some prisoners collect this used chew, and either chew it or smoke it.

Chewing saliva-soaked chew that may have come from a lip with broken skin poses some risk of disease. I’ll discuss that with those guys, but they are going to use the tobacco, period. What remains is finding the safer way to do it.

One approach is placing it in the microwave for a minute. The theory is that a high temperature will kill viruses and bacteria. Though there is some evidence to support this, the heating may be uneven and it’s hardly foolproof. But it’s something that’s available in prison.

With any kind of harm reduction advice, it’s important for me to remember that I don’t get to make decisions for anyone else. It would be safer not to use the discarded chew at all. But they’ve already made that choice. My suggestion to take a safer step may be looked at with disdain. But my experience is that when folks learn of something like this that can still give them what they want, they tend to respond well.

Those guys who smoke the discarded chew have their own concerns. Chew doesn’t burn well, and it takes a long time to dry out. Having it sit around is also harmful, because of the threat of losing  “good time” on your sentence if you’re caught with it.

It’s like a low-tech version of heated tobacco products, though the risk profile may be completely different.

People have devised methods for hiding it and drying it out at the same time, but that still leaves the harm of smoking this really dark and heavy tobacco. Some guys have taken to mixing it with other vegetable matter to stretch it out and make it easier to burn. But others have taken to a new way of “smoking” the chew.

It’s like a low-tech version of heated tobacco products, though the risk profile may be completely different—I have no way of knowing.

Prisoners will use a stolen battery, usually a C-size or an A. Near the positive end at the top, they’ll scrape off a small piece of the coating, exposing the metal casing.

The chew, now slightly dried out, is wrapped with a piece of copper wire, thin, like speaker wire, with the ends hanging off. Attaching one end of the wire to the bare spot in the battery with a piece of tape, you then hold the other end of the wire to the little post on the positive end of the battery.

Current runs through the wire, heating the tobacco but (mostly) not burning it. Vapor comes off the tobacco, and this is inhaled, sometimes with a tube, sometimes without. The vapor doesn’t feel as rough to inhale as the smoke from a rolled cigarette, and only rarely does the tobacco cherry and smolder. This process produces less smoke and less smell, which leaves a smaller footprint for the cops to find, whether or not it’s actually better for your health.

In here, harms related to tobacco use extend far beyond diseases.

If we think of tobacco harm reduction as only addressing the harms of cancer and other smoking-related diseases, then yeah, nothing else works except cutting down or ideally quitting—with or without the help of safer nicotine products.

But in here, harms related to tobacco use extend far beyond diseases. It’s the threat of more time in prison. It’s how the ban has fueled a huge contraband market that produces debt and violence, which I also work to reduce. It’s the risky workarounds people use to get their nicotine, or a replacement substance, under this regime.

Those circumstances speak to a broader point: If our approach to harm reduction includes only our own understanding of the harms, rather than the experiences of the people being harmed, then we’re not really doing harm reduction—we’re just trying to make other people do what we want. Just like the folks making bans.

Harm reduction isn’t just pushing for policy. And for me, tobacco harm reduction looks different to just saying we have to have products available. Sometimes, smoking is not the immediate concern.

Photograph by Lindsay Fox via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post How Prisoners Practice Tobacco Harm Reduction, With No Vapes appeared first on Filter.

Overwhelming evidence shows the personal and societal benefits of prisoners being able to strengthen family bonds through EFV and other visits. Yet Washington Department of Corrections (WDOC) has deliberately created a policy that jeopardizes these benefits by imposing ideology-based restrictions.

Washington State banned smoking in prisons back in 2004. Chaos followed in its prison system. But prisoners weren’t only dealing with the emergence of a contraband tobacco market, associated debt and the violence that always follows prohibition. We also had to deal with the effect on our visitors. Prisoners whose family came in regularly were now faced with the question of how long their loved ones could stay without being able to smoke.

At that time, vapes were not an option. But smokeless tobacco products were banned, for prisoners and visitors—who cannot even bring nicotine patches or gum into the visits room.

Even now that more safer nicotine products are available elsewhere, prisoners can’t access them and the barriers for visitors remain extremely high. Vapes, heated tobacco products and snus are totally banned. And if someone visiting a prisoner for an EFV wants to use even NRT, they must have a doctor’s prescription. This must be filed with the approval paperwork each time they come in. Getting a prescription to wear a patch to a visit for 48 hours is rarely realistic.

“My grandma wouldn’t come up for trailers, because she was like, I am not coming up there and not smoking for two days!”

These barriers lead some would-be visitors to stay away, with devastating consequences for prisoners and their loved ones.

Chris Blackwell, a WDOC prisoner, never had an EFV with his grandmother, for example.

“My grandma wouldn’t come up for trailers,” he told Filter, “because she was like, I am not coming up there and not smoking for like, two days!”

She just recently passed away. So although Blackwell is due to be released soon, he will never see her again.

Meanwhile, in nearly 22 years of incarceration, Brandon Thomas still hasn’t received an EFV with his mother. “My mom’s said this,” he told Filter. “She told me she wanted to come see me at the [EFV], but she couldn’t smoke.”

Asked if being allowed to vape might change her mind, Thomas replied, “Oh yeah, I’m certain.”

Think about who goes to prison for a moment. It’s mostly poor people, and huge numbers of people with substance use disorders and other mental health concerns. All populations which smoke and experience nicotine dependency at very high rates. Prisoners’ families belong to those same populations.

Another, less immediate reason to allow safer nicotine products is the message it would send about relative risks to communities with high smoking rates.

Tony Greco, a WDOC prisoner for more than 20 years who was released in September, long had to navigate the obstacles posed by the anti-nicotine policy.

“My son chews,” he told Filter. “Out at the [EFV] trailer he’d always say, ‘I want a dip, Dad!’ At regular visits, to avoid the discomfort, he’d just have a fat dip in, and they’d never notice.” But getting caught violating prison policy like this could lead to future regular or EFV visits being denied.

Another, less immediate reason to allow safer nicotine products in visits is the message it would send about relative risks to communities with high smoking rates. It’s a message almost never heard in prisons.

“I smoked for 35 years,” Angel Hernandez, who has been in prison for more than three decades, told Filter. “I have family members who’ve died from emphysema. I’m okay with them taking our smokes—but I quit before they took them, so I get it.”

Hernandez said his visits weren’t really affected by the ban. “My people would come in anyway.” But he knew how hard it was for them. “I think [WDOC] should give our people patches if they want them when they come in. We could buy them from the inmate betterment fund and just give them to our people. Like condoms.”

Hernandez had heard of vapes. “All I know about them is what they tell me: They blow up in your pockets,” he smiled.

He was surprised to hear that vaping doesn’t produce smoke, and therefore doesn’t carry the cancer risk associated with smoke. After learning these things, he was amenable to the idea of vapes as a way to make things easier for our families.

WDOC “acknowledges the vital role families play in an incarcerated individual’s life, and the reentry process.”

Secondhand vapor is relatively harmless, but even if they don’t want our families vaping indoors, they could make a little pad right outside the visit rooms and at the EFV trailers.

WDOC “acknowledges the vital role families play in an incarcerated individual’s life, and the reentry process,” reads a statement on its website. “It is the goal of the Family Services Program to identify the challenges faced by families impacted by incarceration, and to provide support and services relative to family needs.”

The harms of the anti-nicotine visits policy aren’t ephemeral misunderstandings. They are tangible barriers to prisoners’ chances upon release, in direct conflict with WDOC’s stated goal of helping people reenter society as successfully as possible.

Both the visits room and the EFV entry process are unfriendly at best. Policy authorizes infringement on personal space when you enter the prison environment; they can search you and your belongings any time they want, and refusal will result in loss of visit privileges for at least six months and notification of your local authorities. That’s on top of what will happen to your family member in prison.

In these circumstances, you’re trying to build and preserve core relationships, which have often been damaged—and then you’re also denied your habitual way of coping with stressors. No wonder it’s often too much.

“I can tell when we’re out at the trailers, she wants to vape. I think if she were allowed, she’d have a better time and be less stressed.”

Greco said his family became stronger because of those challenges, though they’ve been severe.

“My daughter Shyla vapes, and it’s difficult for her when we’re out at the trailers for two days,” he said. “I can tell when we’re out there, she wants to vape. I think if she were allowed, she’d have a better time and be less stressed out there. Not having the things like that, that are part of their daily life, made it so they didn’t want to come as much.”

Having been released soon after our interview, Grevo hopes his main difficulty now will be finding time alone. His grandchildren will take plenty of energy.

Jake Cardwell, another prisoner, told Filter that he’s struggled with rebuilding family relationships. His parents are extremely supportive, but he said he’s betrayed the trust of his family, so understands when his sister says she doesn’t want to come for EFV. She has explicitly stated that she doesn’t want to come in because she can’t smoke, he said, although he feels that’s just an excuse.

“It’s hard because I know that’s not true, but I still feel it,” Cardwell said. “And when she does come for regular visits, I have a hard time coping with that. I think she hates me. Why not?”

“She wasn’t sure she could make it two days. By the end of the visit, she said she couldn’t do any longer. So now we’re just going to do 24-hour visits.”

Patrick Parnell, 33, is 12 years into his sentence. He has 26 years left. He’s currently excited about his recent acceptance into the EFV program. Despite his excitement, he wishes there were something available for his mother.

“This is our second EFV [coming up],” he told Filter. “Our first, we just scheduled a 24-hour visit because she smokes and she wasn’t sure she could make it two days. By the end of the visit, she said she couldn’t do any longer. So now we’re just going to do 24-hour visits.”

Parnell chewed before coming to prison, so understands. But he’d really like to spend more time with his mother. Asked about vaping, he said, “She would like to have some kind of nicotine out there. She would vape in a heartbeat. Anything would be good—even a patch would be better than nothing.”

These harms are not measured in deaths. But they have real impacts on families every day, including people who haven’t broken the law but who suffer because of the system. They are the harms that we can challenge.

The WDOC policy is clearly an overreach. State law defines smoking and vaping separately, and does not ban vaping indoors, or in most public places, or in places of employment. When British prisoners are allowed to vape, and not all United States prisons have smoking and vaping bans, an ideological, detrimental policy is ripe for change.

For some of us, release is imminent. For others, it’s still a long way down the road. For all of us, it is daunting, and we need our family and community ties if we’re to have a chance.

I am currently working toward release, seeking clemency action, and the prospect of getting out to people scares the daylights out of me. The time we can have with our families beforehand—to forge those bonds, to restore broken trust, to build bridges and develop communication—that time is cherished by us, and needed.

Photograph by Arif Syuhada via Pexels

The post Banning Prison Visitors From Vaping Is Unjustified and Harmful appeared first on Filter.

No one in the prisons where I’ve spent the past three decades of my life ever says that chewing is safer than smoking, or that vaping is safer than either. So I was uninformed.

I had never really thought there would be a need for tobacco harm reduction (THR). Like everyone else, I thought the only reduction of harm that could be done here is quitting, and “Quit if you want to live” is not really harm reduction.

That’s the mainstream message: Tobacco kills! Don’t do it! End of story. And at least where I live, there isn’t another story.

I tested HIV positive in 1992. I had not heard the words “harm reduction” then, but I started to pass out clean needles and bleach kits in my circle of peers, and talk about how to not transmit the virus. When I was sent to prison in 1995, everyone already knew me from that work, and I have continued HIV harm reduction ever since. 

Why on earth, I wondered, are we talking about “tobacco harm reduction” when we haven’t remotely accomplished regular harm reduction?

But in that light, I admit that some of my first feelings about the concept of THR were less than welcoming. A lot has been done to reduce HIV transmissions and HIV/AIDS-related deaths. Yet, in marginalized populations and many parts of the world, transmission rates stay high and people keep dying.

Why on earth, I wondered, are we talking about “tobacco harm reduction” when we haven’t remotely accomplished regular harm reduction?

This knee-jerk reaction is common. Some North American harm reductionists, working to stem a devastating overdose crisis, might feel similarly. And when I more recently told a few friends that I was going to be a tobacco harm reduction fellow for Filter, some of their responses reflected that. Not disrespectful, but almost dismissive.

But that reaction, which I initially shared, becomes a problem when you consider, as I began to do, the sheer scale of harms THR works to reduce. Close to a half million smoking-related deaths each year in the United States. About 8 million around the world.

Just like deaths from HIV/AIDS or overdose, these deaths are preventable. Quitting nicotine is an option, but for many people, particularly those experiencing high stress and anxiety, it’s undesirable or impossible. That’s where far safer ways of using nicotine come in—and if you’re not in prison, as I’ve come to learn, there are now more of these available than ever before.

I believe that intersectionality can be used to address common misgivings about THR, and to achieve greater success in both THR and harm reduction generally.

As harm reductionists, we have to be able to direct our compassion and our efforts to multiple issues, without feeling that one focus detracts from another—especially when these issues so obviously intersect. People who use banned drugs, for instance, smoke at very high rates. And their deaths are more likely to be related to combustible tobacco than to any other drug use.

I believe that intersectionality can be used to address those common misgivings about THR, and to achieve greater success in both THR and harm reduction generally. There are real, tangible reasons that harm reductionists of all stripes should consider THR a purposeful element of the work they do.

The need to fight misinformation is another example of common interests. How many times have we been told that you can overdose from touching fentanyl? Or that naloxone “enables” drug use? Or that naltrexone should be the priority medication for prisoners with opioid use disorder?

Similarly, misinformation about THR is rampant. It powerfully influences policy, and costs human lives.

Most people don’t know that vapes, and oral or heated tobacco products, are much safer than smoking. I didn’t, either. The common rhetoric is that switching from cigarettes to vapes is the same thing as switching from brand name A to brand name B. These are fundamentally different things and have completely different levels of risk. But everyone keeps parroting the false information that has been provided. They’re denied lifesaving knowledge.

The real human impacts of misinformation are particularly apparent to prisoners. My experience of nearly 30 years in prison shows how both government and prison officials fail to protect us because of misinformation. They enact policies for moral and ideological reasons, not because any data show those policies will work.

In many cases these policies have created more harm. Making vapes and snus available on commissary would improve our safety; tobacco-related harms in prison mean not only lung cancer and other diseases, but the debt and violence fostered by tobacco bans.

Deliberate reframing of data or history to meet a specific narrative is reprehensible. It diminishes the value of the efforts of the people who did the work, and dismisses the facts in favor of a preconceived idea. This is what certain actors are feeding the masses.

Perhaps most of all, the answers I’m seeking concern how we can collectively move toward a more integrated and complete harm reduction approach.

Misinformation is generated, facilitated and fed by stigma. And just like people who use banned drugs, people who smoke have been stigmatized and subjected to decades of “Just say no” campaigns.

There have to be ways of overcoming these phenomena, which impede all areas of harm reduction. It seems to me that seeking to write accurate articles about THR is one of them.

I’m still near the beginning of my journey in tobacco harm reduction, and I don’t have too many answers. But I do have a lot of questions. These concern the science behind THR, and how to communicate it effectively. They concern the roles of Big Tobacco, Big Philanthropy, lawmakers and regulators in creating a situation where—60 years after a landmark surgeon general’s report highlighted the risks of smoking, and decades after THR alternatives emerged—smoking is still our biggest cause of preventable death.

Perhaps most of all, the answers I’m seeking concern how we can collectively move toward a more integrated and complete harm reduction approach. If some of my questions over the course of my fellowship were to inspire new work in this direction, I would consider that the biggest success of all.

Photograph by anokarina via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Why Tobacco Harm Reduction? A First Question of Many appeared first on Filter.

Back in 2004, right before tobacco was banned in Washington State Department of Corrections facilities, one prisoner at Clallam Bay Corrections Center happened to have had three unopened pouches of Top tobacco among his property when he was sent to the hole. When he came out in June 2005, to a world where tobacco was no longer sold at commissary and the stockpiles were depleted, he got his property back from storage and found the pouches still there. He sold them for $100 each.

People still miss tobacco, but there’s no market for it today. Multiple prisoners who used to move tobacco unanimously told Filter that you’d be stupid to try bringing it in. Once prohibition kicked in, everyone shifted toward things that were more financially worth the risk.

For their first decade or so in Washington State prisons, synthetic cannabinoids—AKA “Spice”—came in the form of dried plant material. Starting around 2008, that’s what took the place of rolling tobacco.

Back then, people would pay $3 to $6 for a “pinner”—a thin pinch of Spice, rolled up and ready to smoke. Not enough to actually get anyone high, but that’s not what pinners were for. It was common for buyers to actually stretch them with dried-out banana peel strings (which have no effect at all) just to add bulk and make them last longer. Pinners provided a little pick-me-up, which was all folks wanted—something to help take the edge off of prison but that still allowed them to go about their day, and that felt familiar to hold in their hand and smoke. The way they used to use cigarettes.

Even today, no one really likes smoking paper. But there were inevitable reasons the Spice market went that way.

The herb form was what everyone wanted, but around 2014 or so Spice started being sold as “strips”—soaked onto little pieces of paper that are smoked directly. Lots of drugs in lots of prisons are sold this way, and it’s become the norm for Spice. Strips got a lot more popular around the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, but here at least they’d completely replaced the herb form of Spice by 2019.

But the fact that Spice didn’t start out as strips is a huge part of how it got so popular. By the time the plant material was phased out, the Spice market included all the people who’d only wanted a stand-in for cigarettes, and strips are nothing like cigarettes. Now, nobody buys Spice with the intention of smoking it and going right back to work. People buy it to get high.

Even with the plant material kind of Spice, money already went about twice as far as it did with marijuana. For the price of a pinner, a quarter-square of Spice in strip form was enough for someone to get high. If they could afford a full square, they could get really high.

A big problem that leads to “epees”—Spice overdoses—is that with strips there’s no way to gauge dosage. People “start low go slow,” but that only does so much; a quarter-inch square is the smallest (ie. the “lowest”) dose sold, and physically you can’t start much smaller than that. And the point of strips is that the whole thing’s gone in an instant, since taking your time is kind of a luxury reserved for those who aren’t constantly surrounded by cops. 

Even today, no one seems to really like smoking paper. But there were some inevitable reasons the Spice market went that way.

Spice, the strip kind, is a product of prohibition.

Whatever chemical compounds are in Spice, they just work better to spray on paper compared to other drugs—they don’t seem to make the paper wrinkle or leave an obvious shine like meth would, if you tried to spray it on in the amounts people wanted. So because the delivery method still holds up, Spice has become more and more potent.

For the people smuggling it in, the plant material posed similar problems to tobacco in that it’s bulky; strips are a lot more compact so they’re easier to hide. And the people using strips found them more discreet too—strips are gone in one hit and don’t leave anything behind.

Spice additionally doesn’t have a noticeable smell the way tobacco or marijuana do. Even meth has a smell when it’s smoked, but Spice doesn’t. It’s also hard to identify on drug tests, at least accurately, which is why even outside prison so many people who use Spice are under some form of state supervision where they have to give urine samples. In here, someone can’t be written up for an epee without drug-testing or being caught in the act; on paper it’s only a medical emergency. But as Spice becomes more prevalent and corrections departments across the country come to hate it more, epees that draw attention often prompt some form of punishment.

Prohibition of a drug often does make it more dangerous. Smoking strips is less medically harmful than smoking cigarettes—especially prison cigarettes—but in here the biggest harms are things you might not hear about. How many people end up in predatory debt traps that’ll get them killed or disabled way faster than tobacco. How many people who had a bad epee or a faulty drug test had their earned “good time” revoked, or lost a shot at parole, or got transferred to a more violent facility on the other side of the state from their family.

I’m told that Spice isn’t as big a deal to law enforcement outside prison as it is to the cops in here. But law enforcement is the only reason Spice is as prevalent as it is in prison. 

Spice, the strip kind, is a product of prohibition. Nobody likes it, but they all use it because it’s the safest available option.

Photograph (edited) via Monroe County Sheriff’s Office

The post How Prison Tobacco Bans Created a Drug Market No One Wanted appeared first on Filter.

When I got off the chain bus at Washington State Penitentiary (Walla Walla) in 1996, the first thing that happened was someone I knew offered me a smoke. Later he brought two pouches of Top rolling tobacco and a bag of Keefe coffee, saying that should help until my belongings arrived.

In those days Washington State Department of Corrections (WDOC) prisons still sold cigarettes at commissary. Tobacco was everywhere. But the state was preparing to enact a law against smoking in public places, which by definition meant all state prisons. In 2000, Stafford Creek Corrections Center opened as the state’s first non-smoking prison. That was around when people started stockpiling tobacco. 

In 2004, the ban finally arrived. Tobacco products were pulled from commissary. All tobacco inside WDOC facilities was now contraband and so possession was a major disciplinary infraction. But in the beginning it wasn’t enforced that way. Corrections officers (COs) were mostly sympathetic, and allowed people to use up the tobacco they’d stockpiled until it was gone. But after a year or two, when it was increasingly obvious that tobacco was coming from somewhere other than commissary, things changed.

If someone was suspected of smuggling in tobacco, not just using it, then while they were in the hole staff would open an investigation.

At Washington Corrections Center, where I’m currently incarcerated, prisoners who were housed across five WDOC facilities in the mid-2000s described enforcement that started off unevenly.

Airway Heights Corrections Center hunted down cigarettes from early on. If COs suspected someone of smoking, they were in that person’s cell asking if their incense oils were really there to cover the smell of tobacco, or if some discoloration on their wall outlet was from arcing it with pencil lead, to make a spark.

At Monroe Correctional Complex, for a while the COs’ response to contraband cigarettes was more like, “Dude, you aren’t supposed to have those.” Infractions were only written up occasionally, and their penalties were small. But over the years people got infracted more and more regularly, until it was standard for everyone to go to the hole if they were caught with a cigarette.

Recently WDOC has been moving away from solitary confinement. But up until the COVID-19 pandemic, when someone was infracted for tobacco possession, they got handcuffed and taken to the hole while COs tore up their cell. They’d lose belongings; privileges; 90 or maybe 180 days of “good time” they’d earned through good behavior. The possession infraction would keep them in the hole at least 10 days, but at most 30 days. 

But if they were suspected of smuggling in tobacco, not just using it, then while they were in the hole staff would open an investigation—which is 30 days in the hole at minimum, and then however long the investigation lasts. If it was more than 30 days, which they always were, then the person was stuck there until their 90-day hearing.

Introducing contraband to a prison can be criminally prosecuted and result in an additional sentence, depending on the contraband, but that’s not common. People were mostly punished according to WDOC policies, which govern us the way laws govern people on the outside. In practice, introducing contraband was sanctioned pretty much the same no matter what the contraband was.

Within a couple of years, people simply stopped bringing in tobacco. If they were going to face months in the hole regardless of whether they were moving tobacco or heroin or guns, they decided they might as well shift to something that made it worth their while.

The Iron Law doesn’t always hold up in prison, but it essentially explains what happened after the Department of Corrections banned cigarettes.

For a little while people tried to fill the market void with marijuana, but it didn’t really fit. Tobacco-only customers wanted something they could hold in their hand and smoke, but they didn’t want to get high.

According to the Iron Law of Prohibition, cracking down on a banned substance pushes the market toward something more potent—compact things are easier to hide than bulky things. Moonshine instead of beer; fentanyl instead of heroin.

The Iron Law doesn’t hold up in a lot of situations, and in prison—where you’re surrounded by law enforcement all the time—the premise doesn’t always work to begin with. But the Iron Law essentially explains what happened in prisons after they banned cigarettes. Prohibition steered the market away from tobacco and toward something more potent, and later something more compact. And arguably more harmful, depending on how you look at it. It just wasn’t higher-potency nicotine. It was synthetic cannabinoids.

It’s pretty common knowledge these days that the high from “Spice,” as synthetic cannabinoids are known in WDOC, is nothing like the the high from marijuana. But the reason Spice got a foothold in the market here, and today seems to be steadily replacing everything except opioids, is that it used to mimic the experience of smoking cigarettes. And everybody missed those.

Read Part 3 of this story here

Correction, July 18: A previous version of this article stated that the author arrived at Walla Walla in 1995.

Photograph (edited) via Monroe County Sheriff’s Office

The post How Iron Law of Prohibition Works in Prisons, Where Everything’s Prohibited appeared first on Filter.