Prisoners roll smuggled tobacco in Bible pages to beat jail smoking bans
PRISONERS are turning to the Bible to beat controversial smoking bans — by using pages of the holy book to roll their own cigarettes with smuggled tobacco.
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PRISONERS are turning to the Bible to beat controversial smoking bans — by using pages of the holy book as papers for making roll-your-own cigarettes with smuggled tobacco.
The Bible pages are apparently favoured because they are thin and burn well.
One recently released prisoner said the divine intervention showed how hard some inmates were finding it to go cold turkey.
“It (Bible paper) burns like a Tally-Ho (rolling paper),” he said.
The holy rollers tale has come from Victoria, which introduced its smoking ban before NSW.
A Corrections Victoria spokesman said using Bible pages was nothing new to the prison system and had been a practice behind bars for decades.
This was despite inmates having access to rolling paper until the smoking bans came into place in June this year.
The prisoner said tobacco was now alongside narcotics in the jail contraband market.
“I could have got off my head on ice, slowed down with some heroin and finished it off with a cigarette,” he said.
The majority of prisoners and staff had embraced the smoke-free environment, the Corrections Victoria spokesman said.
The spokesman said there had been instances of prisoners misusing nicotine patches and searches were being made for inmates stockpiling them.