New Prison Money

Nineteen months ago Alberta banished tobacco from its prisons. That is a pretty scary thought—prisoners get more irritable than they already are. Fortunately when it comes to illegal drugs, there is no better place for the development of an alternative source and delivery system. Inmates are cooking their own cigarettes. They take nicotine patches and cook the nicotine out and then soak it up with toilet paper, which is then dried for smoking. This surely is a testimony to human ingenuity and the power of nicotine. They must have shown documentaries on how cigarettes are made in prison because what they are doing is simply a reverse engineered cigarette production method. The most interesting thing though is this no doubt create not only a new industry in prison but a new currency. Cigarette, in movies at least, is supposed to be the currency in prisons. So, beyond addiction, they need a new form of currency to facilitate ‘commerce’ behind bars. The unintended benefit of the ban may be the creation of a new and more portable money—nicotine patches. It is like moving from gold and silver to paper money. It is going to be a new world inside.