Concerns about possible impacts of a smoking ban in prison are an interesting insight into the myths surrounding New Zealand’s deadliest addiction.The idea that cigarettes have a calming effect on prisoners, for example, and without them there would be violence and riots.
Nicotine gives its slaves nothing but death.
Cigarettes don’t relax people any more than they help them concentrate, yet these contradictory effects are both cited as reasons to smoke.
The urge for a cigarette is the nicotine equivalent of a heroin addiction — but it is so subtle that smokers often don’t understand they are drug addicts, rather than people who like to have something in their hands, or need something to calm them down (about 20 times a day).
It is a feeling like hunger, but not for food that we need to live.
It is a restless feeling, a slight emptiness. A feeling that goes away when the addict gets a dose of nicotine, whether through a cigarette, a cigar, a pipe, a patch, a piece of gum or an inhaler.
When the restlessness is gone the smoker is again able to concentrate, or feel satisfied after a meal, or relax . . . for about 20 minutes. After that the need for another fix starts building.
When smokers are bored they notice the withdrawal far earlier, and one emotion prisoners have to deal with a lot is boredom.
With little else to occupy their minds, prisoners become far more obsessed with cigarettes than they would be on the outside where nicotine is freely available.
An astonishing 68 percent of prisoners smoke and cigarettes are the prison currency throughout the world. Guards also find them a useful source of power.
The good news is that after just three weeks this addiction is broken, and as long as the ex-smoker can realise cigarettes were a distraction rather than a relaxation or concentration aid, they are home free.
We should feed prisoner boredom with literacy and rehabilitation programmes, not cigarettes.
