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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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New Bill in CA Would Ban Smoking in Prisons [01/15-3]
Excerpts from: Bill Aims to End Smoking by Inmates
By Jenifer Warren LA Times [01/15/04]
California prisoners would be forbidden to smoke — and required to kick the habit cold turkey — under a bill that passed its first test in the state Assembly on Tuesday.
Citing rising health-care costs, the bill's author said his measure was not intended to further punish inmates but rather to make their lives — and the lives of guards exposed to second-hand smoke — healthier.
Assemblyman Tim Leslie (R-Tahoe City) also said his legislation, passed by the Public Safety Committee, could save the state as much as $280 million a year in inmate medical costs, though the Department of Corrections could not confirm that figure.
Others predicted that banning cigarette sales at prison canteens would make a pack of smokes more valuable than ever as contraband. In some states that have bans in place, cigarettes are hot commodities on the black market, with one smoke sometimes fetching as much as $60. Some states also reported a dramatic rise in assaults after the ban.
In California, smoking is already prohibited at eight of the state's 32 prisons — those that serve as medical facilities or as reception centers for incoming inmates. At one, Wasco State Prison in Kern County, inmates staged a brief strike, refusing to report to their jobs, the day after the ban was imposed.
The health-care budget for inmates has been soaring in recent years, from $566 million in 2000 to $975 million this year. Leslie calculates that a smoking ban would cause a related decline in smoking-related diseases and save the state "big dollars."
His figures come from a state Department of Health Services study that found each California smoker racks up $3,500 per year in smoking-related health-care costs. If that figure were applied to inmates who smoke, the saving would be about $280 million, Leslie said.
Only one member of the Assembly Public Safety Committee, Assemblywoman Jackie Goldberg (D-Los Angeles), voted against the bill.
Also passing the committee Tuesday was a measure that would redefine the purpose of imprisonment under California law to include the word "rehabilitation" rather than simply "punishment."
The bill, by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-West Hollywood), comes in the wake of a report by a government watchdog agency that found California parolees leave prison unprepared to find work, stay off drugs and function on the outside. As a result, the report by the Little Hoover Commission found, two out of three ex-convicts wind up back in prison.
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