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19. Drugs
- University of North Texas Press
- Chapter
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119 In March of 1995, TDCJ outlawed the use of tobacco products on all of its units, by both guards and inmates. Trumpeted as a cost-saving measure , the move probably did save the system millions of dollars. Building interiors no longer needed the constant repainting due to layers of smoke scum. The damage done by incidental, and sometimes intentional, fires was eliminated. Convicts suffering from asthma, emphysema, and other lung ailments could literally breathe easier, and convicts’ health improved overall, dropping the system’s medical cost. One totally unintended consequence of the new tobacco policy was a sharp decline in drug trafficking, as the convicts who sold drugs—and the guards who smuggled them—realized the enormous profits and relatively low risks of now trafficking tobacco. While drugs are still available —especially on the units where older convicts retain their lifelong addiction to heroin—the businessmen who maintained the large operations now deal tobacco, not cocaine or marijuana. The truth in this is borne out by a recent study that said that random drug analyses of convicts in all fifty states showed that Texas led the nation in drug-free tests, with ninety-eight percent of those tested coming up clean. TDCJ officials attributed this to the fact that TDCJ no longer drugs Chapter nineteen 120 Chapter Nineteen has inmates going on furloughs and thus inmates can no longer bring in drugs, and that is undoubtedly part of the reason Texas convicts are so clean. But the other is the fact the tobacco black market is so lucrative that it makes drug smuggling incredibly stupid. For years, drugs in prison were dealt by two groups: the addicted and the connected. Sometimes, these were the same, as addicts coming into the system kept their free-world connections and established pipelines for the flow of heroin, cocaine, and marijuana. But no one deals in prison without gang sponsorship, or at least approval. Stronger on some units but present on all, the gangs take a piece of each delivery and eventually take control of the mules—the inmate trusties and the guards. But drug dealing is essentially about money. The addict who deals eventually cannot maintain his business, as he uses up his profits or allows his need to push him into bad decisions. The dealer who doesn’t use his product deals strictly for profit. While drug dealing is a profitable business, the risks are huge, especially in prison, where there are few diversions and nowhere to run. Not only are prison officials out to bust you, so are local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies. One sale to an informant can result in a lengthy sentence stacked on the one now being done. For the guards, arrest for smuggling will result in their being placed among a group of men who abhor all law enforcement personnel and are ready to prove it. But so long as there was money to be made and no black market alternative, drugs were readily available, because the gangs had members ready to be plugged into the slots of those getting arrested. At one time, inhalants were a big business. When the guards were more scarce and rarely ventured onto the runs, glue and thinner were big sellers. But the increase of officers and their correspondingly greater presence in inmate living quarters has put a damper on inhalant abuse. You’ll still see pockets of thinner sniffers, usually on the yard at night, telltale by the rags or empty Coke cans held to their noses. These cheapthrill addicts buy thinner from maintenance workers or craft shop members , gas from transportation workers, and correction fluid from clerks. Now the money is in tobacco, which is just as profitable with much less risk. One cigarette sells for up to two dollars, depending on the unit and the type of money—“good money” being food or coffee, “junk [18.209.66.87] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:09 GMT) Drugs 121 money” being anything else. One pack of tobacco yields forty to sixty cigarettes. That pack will cost a dealer ten dollars in cash, usually smuggled in during a visit and then given to a guard. In turn, the guard will take that ten dollars, buy six or eight packs of tobacco, and sell each pack for ten dollars to his prison dealer. So, the dealer turned ten dollars into seventy or so dollars worth of prison goods, while the guard turned the ten into seventy dollars...