Jail’s Smoking Ban Has Inmates Yearning for Taste of Freedom

Larry Parker got out of jail Monday, but the sweet air of freedom meant nothing to him. What he wanted to inhale was some strong nicotine, as deeply and as quickly as he possibly could.

He’d had the bad timing to get arrested just as Los Angeles County phased in a new no-smoking policy in all jail facilities. After two weeks without, he was a desperate man.

Salvation presented itself in the form of the cigarette butts that littered the ground just outside the inmates’ exit of the downtown Men’s Central Jail. Sitting on a stone bench under a scrubby pine, Parker sucked greedily on a piece of a Pall Mall. Then he reached into the dirt for a Marlboro remnant. “I went crazy in there,” he announced. “Couldn’t sleep. Nerves.”

At the other end of the bench, another man just released was savoring his own first smoke, bummed from a passerby. He lifted his head just long enough to predict, “It’s gonna cause a riot in there.”

Indeed, the smoking ban had already been blamed for a disturbance Sunday--the first official smokeless day--at the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Rancho in Castaic. About 500 inmates threw rocks at deputies and vandalized a barracks. Two were hurt in the violence.

All was quiet Monday, but there were additional precautions: “Instructions are to give out hard candies and information about ‘smoke-enders’ programs if there is tension,” said Sheriff’s Sgt. Noel Lanier.

In imposing the ban for health reasons, Sheriff Sherman Block tampered with a keystone of prison culture. The American Lung Assn. has estimated that 80% of the state’s inmates smoke, compared with 21% of the population at large. Cigarettes are a way to pass the long, long hours, and they are also used as currency by smokers and nonsmokers alike.

One hopeful visitor to the Central Jail told an incarcerated friend Sunday: “Well, this will give you a good reason to quit.” She reported his reply: “Not a chance.”

Block unveiled his no-tobacco plan in April. It was not the first. Jails operated by the Los Angeles Police Department, Burbank and San Fernando all prohibit smoking.

But suspects are held only a short time in those facilities. “Generally, they wait to smoke until they get to a county facility,” said Officer Anthony Freeman of the LAPD’s Devonshire Division jail. “But they can’t do that anymore.”

County jails stopped selling cigarettes at their in-house stores Aug. 1. Over one month, the maximum each inmate was allowed to possess dropped from 20 packs to two packs to one pack to . . . nothing.

During that month, until “no-smoke day” arrived Sunday, prices on the inmate-to-inmate exchange soared from $40 to $60 and, in some cases, as high as $100 a pack. Individual cigarettes fetched $7.

Quite possibly, they still do. “No matter what, there’s still going to be cigarettes in there,” said Javier Soto, 19, who was released three days ago from the Honor Rancho. “They come in from the outside. When you come in, they take your cigarettes and throw them on the floor, but the trusties pick them up.”

For those who can’t afford the now-scarce commodity, there are ways to make do. Freed inmates say a new fad is retrieving leaves from tea bags and rolling them in a piece of the paper strip that surrounds new rolls of toilet tissue.

“You can see them breaking up tea bags, but that’s not what it smells like,” said Mike Hernandez, who had left the Central Jail on Sunday. “All the guards are going crazy because they think it’s marijuana. They keep rushing the cells.”

Times staff writer Aaron Curtiss contributed to this story.