One More Drag

Cliff couldn't have been released from prison at a better time. You may have heard from Lou's blog that prisons are removing tobacco sales from the inmates. I'm not sure who came up with this brainy idea but I think it's adding gasoline to a smoking compost pile. Yep, it is. I know all the controversy surrounding this topic, but imagine yourself in a place with 4,000 men who have had, and should in most cases, every freedom taken from their lives. Forced celibacy, withdrawals and rehab hardly ever are successful, peaceful life-changing tactics. Let them have one vice.

Anyway.....

Remember "Grandpa B" , Cliff's prison cellmate? I received a letter from him the other day. He's one of the prisoners I write to and he is glad to get my letters because he wants to know how Cliff is faring these days. This last letter mentioned that Cliff couldn't have left at a better time due to the "no-smoking" ordinance set in the prisons. Grandpa B wrote that because of that ordinance, the place has become even more intolerable than ever before. Fights are breaking out left and right, people are getting hurt and cells are being broken into looking for tobacco purchased prior to the "no more sale" date. I know this all seems strange but its happening. Their cells are not like the movies, at least not at this prison. They're more like very small dorm rooms with steel doors on them that have narrow windows inserted to see into the cell. The inmates are given keys to their cell doors which has a $45.00 value attached in the event of losing or destroying them.

Grandpa also wrote that the inmates are extremely fidgety without tobacco, and drug use seems to have increased. Those who can get their hands on a cigarette are "paying" $4.00 per cigarette through their commissary items and rolling papers are equivalent to 2 bars of soap. Who knows what else they will do for just one more drag? The most startling piece of news in this letter was reading that just a few days prior one inmate died from an overdose.

Grandpa's letter makes me feel incredibly grateful to see Cliff home and witness the transformation God has made in his life. It also makes me feel incredibly sad to read that lives which we think are being somewhat saved from a life and death of street drugs by rules and restrictions are still being controlled by the drugs for which they are most likely incarcerated.

People are dying on the streets and dying in the prisons from the same poison. Someone's son, brother, uncle, father, and friends lives are up in smoke....


*All Pics Googled*

6 comments:

Annette said...

Laura, is this just in your state or nation wide? Wow, what a set for disaster. Glad Cliff is safe at home with you.

Lou said...

Yes, Andrew has told me the exact thing. I'm in the 'pick your battles' camp, but it is too late.

We'll see how it plays out, as the guards smoke just as much as the inmates.

Laura said...

Annette, I don't know if this is a nationwide change or not. It may be, though, if it's insurance related. I haven't checked it out. Guess I should do that!

J-Online said...

I remembering Lou mentioning this in one of her posts and I was shocked. I can't imagine how this is going to help. UGH. Glad Cliff is home now!

clean and crazy said...

You know this is such a gratitude check,and I for one am grateful that your Cliff is out of prison. It may make things difficult in there now but maybe it will help out later. I would rather the whole world quit smoking. Cigarettes killed my Mom with Cancer. I will pray for those inside to get some peace, and I am grateful that you have your loved one at home. Hug him tight.

Syd said...

Laura, glad that Cliff is away from the chaos of the prison. I've never thought much of the penal system in this country but don't have any experience with it either.