'Smoke in' celebrates American Cancer Society event
Jump to full article: Foster's/Citizen Online, 2008-11-21
Author: JOHN KOZIOL
Intro: While the rest of the country was observing the American Cancer Society's "Great American Smoke Out" on Thursday, inmates at the Lakes Region Facility prison in Laconia were making state history as part of the Department of Corrections first-ever "Smoke In."
The 350 medium-security inmates culminated a yearlong tobacco smoking-cessation effort at LRF with a series of events that highlighted both the health risks of smoking to themselves and to family members as well as the legal ones. . . .
The idea behind the "Smoke In" -- which the DOC sponsored with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services' Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, Belknap County CoRe Coalition and Breathe NH -- was to educate inmates and their families about all the consequences of tobacco use, said Warden Jane Coplan, who noted that tobacco is the biggest contraband problem at LRF.
"There's big money to be made," . . .
With any luck, the "Smoke In" will have helped some inmates give up tobacco, said Brauns, with Breathe NH's Marie Mulroy adding that "it takes a community effort" -- like the one on display Thursday in the LRF's Toll Building gymnasium -- to help wean somebody off the noxious weed.
The LRF smoking cessation program has an extra benefit, Mulroy said, in that participants -- the program is voluntary for those inmates who want to stop smoking but mandatory for those caught with tobacco -- also get to apply what they learn toward getting their general equivalency diploma (GED).
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