After three years of being smoke free, two of Utah's prison facilities are allowing inmates to light up again.
The Draper prison's minimum security programs - Lone Peak at Camp Williams and Promontory - are now allowing inmates to smoke, smoke, smoke those cigarettes.The reason, says corrections spokesman Jack Ford, is that many of the inmates in those two programs spend a lot of time off prison property working, and they have access to tobacco products during that time.
Not only can they buy cigarettes off property while working, but the temptation to smuggle them into the prison is a doozy.
A black market driven by seemingly never-ending demand has made cigarettes one of the hottest items for sale.
"We prefer (inmates) buy cigarettes through the commissary rath-er than be involved in the black market," Ford said.
Inmates reported paying $5 for a single cigarette and up to $60 for a pack of smokes, depending on where an inmate was buying. More secure facilities had more outrageous prices.
"(The tobacco black market) has been a problem inside the prisons," Ford said. "Tobacco became kind of the drug of choice."
Smoking was off-limits before the 1994 ban inside prison facilities, but Ford said it was nearly impossible to keep the smoke outside. Faced with lawsuits from those upset about breathing second-hand smoke, officials just banned all tobacco products.
That was February of 1994, and Utah became only the second state to completely ban any tobacco product in all state prison facilities. Vermont attempted a ban the year before but eased restrictions after a thriving black market caused problems inside the state's prisons.
It took less than a month for a similar black market for tobacco products to take hold in Utah's prisons.
In just the first three months, both inmates and prison officials reported fights over tobacco or tobacco debts, one of which sent an inmate to the hospital, and at least one officer was arrested for selling the outlawed item to inmates.
The problem officials faced was that the risk of smuggling cigarettes began to look meager compared to the incredible profit to be made by selling them inside the facilities.
So for now, inmates living in the minimum security buildings will be allowed to smoke outside. Smoking is still banned at other prison facilities, but that may change once inmates in those buildings get a whiff of the change.
"If you start it one place, you get inmates in the other places calling it discrimination," Ford said.