Categories
· Cessation
· Tobacco Control
· Prisons
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U.S. smoking rates have declined, but tobacco still runs rampant in prisons. A new study documents a technique to help prisoners quit.
Jump to full article: Miller-McCune online magazine, 2008-11-29
Author: Ryan Blitstein
Intro: In American prisons, tobacco is a way of life; smoking rates are more than triple the figure for the country as a whole. As a result, millions of prisoners risk smoking-related heart and lung diseases, liver problems and diabetes.
With the prison population swelling to more than 2.3 million, or roughly 1 percent of U.S. adults, such dangers are threatening more people than ever before.
Some correctional facilities have tried to ban tobacco, with mixed success. But new research describes a treatment that could help prisoners stop smoking: a program similar to those offered to people in the general population. . . .
In prison, though, non-smokers are still in the minority -- between 70 and 85 percent of prisoners smoke. That's partly an unintended consequence of a practice once thought humane: Until the mid-1980s, many facilities provided prisoners with free cigarettes. They often became the currency in the lockups' barter-based economies.
"Tobacco is integrated into the prison culture," said Ross Kauffman, a doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University, whose dissertation explores policies addressing prison tobacco use.
Despite their addiction, roughly 70 percent of smoking prisoners say they want to quit, about the same as in the general population.
"There's this myth that it's the only thing they have left. People ask: 'Why take away smoking?' But they want to quit, too," Cropsey said.
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