Blowing smoke

Selling e-cigs to inmates a grab for money

Once upon a time, the idea of letting inmates in the county jail smoke anything was tantamount to giving inmates TV privileges: some taxpayers were likely to accuse a permissive sheriff of going soft on those he had locked up.

Benton County has a colorful history with such matters. Recall one Andy Lee, the late sheriff who both felt no need to make jail a comfortable place and recognized the political points such an approach could score with voters. During his term, inmates got cold sandwiches as their meals. Oh, they met the minimum requirements for the nutritional needs of inmates, but at the very minimum.

Sheriff Lee recognized what may seem obvious, but what also goes over some people’s heads: Jail isn’t supposed to be a desirable place to be.

We’ve seen the inside of some county jails. Fortunately, we were only there as visitors, not as the county’s wards. But rest assured, the jailers could provide everything modern moviegoers have — reclining chairs, restaurant food ordering, a bar and top-notch entertainment — and jail would still never be a place anyone wants to be. Even a luxurious hotel loses its pizzazz if the door is locked and someone else holds the key.

Back to the whole smoking thing: The Benton County Sheriff’s Office recently asked the Quorum Court to back a proposal to sell electronic cigarettes from the jail’s commissary. The justices of the peace deadlocked 6-6 on the idea, but it could come up again.

Historically, the jail has been a nonsmoking facility, and that made sense to most people. Never did we hear sheriffs approaching the governing body to plead for selling cigarettes to inmates, for any reason.

Now, Sheriff Shawn Holloway’s chief of staff, Meyer Gilbert, relates how it causes additional stress for inmates who are arrested to quit “cold turkey,” and that additional stress can make the job of jailers more difficult.

Are jailers getting soft? Since when does it make sense to provide inmates a harmful substance in the hope that it will calm their nerves?

Let’s not pretend electronic cigarettes aren’t harmful. They’re just another delivery device for nicotine, an addictive substance everyone would be better without. Yes, they’re not as harmful as tobacco cigarettes, but let’s not celebrate them as healthy, either. They are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, meaning the folks mixing up “vapes” can be putting pretty much anything in their concoctions.

We’re not here to suggest a nanny state in which public policies attempt to force individuals to make healthier choices. Still, putting government in the business of providing access to those harmful substances is contrary to almost every other governmental policy to discourage unhealthy habits.

So why do it? Did the Benton County jail staff suddenly become sympathetic to the addiction-related pains of the imprisoned, after all these decades of rejecting smoking in the jailhouse? Is vaping really, as jailers suggest, a key to better discipline within the jail?

No, there’s no jittery inmate crisis here. Rather, the folks at the Benton County jail are feeding government’s own addiction — the need for more money. Rest assured they’ve been lobbied by a company or companies that in other jails have sold $2 or $3 e-cigs to a literally captive market for $9 or $10 each. This marketing effort targets a population that has been stripped of just about every other convenience or luxury in life and plays to their addictions. Indeed, the makers of e-cigarettes no doubt see the incarcerated population of America as a lucrative path toward an expanded customer base.

From the jail’s perspective, it’s a revenue grab. And once the jail starts preying on the inmates’ addictionrelated weaknesses, the county jail will become just as hooked on the money the unethical practice delivers. It would of course be much worse to sell inmates illicit drugs, whether pot or cocaine or meth, but the principle is the same: It’s wrong for government to become a dealer of substances harmful to the end-user, and particularly cruel to dangle these high-dollar “treats” in front of inmates when simple boredom makes the lure of e-cigarettes even stronger.

They’re just inmates, right? High numbers of incarcerated people suffer from some form of mental illness and many more suffer some form of addiction. Encouraging jailers to become pushers of an addictive substance, no matter how much more sophisticated its packaging, isn’t good government.

This isn’t about what jailed people are willing to buy. It’s about whether Benton County government is willing to operate by a higher standard, one that’s not driven by easy money, that’s not willing to take advantage of fellow human beings in dire circumstances, even if those circumstances are well earned.

Selling e-cigarettes for exorbitant prices isn’t the next big thing in jail population management. It sounds like the next big thing in county jail fundraising.

We hope this idea disappears into thin air.