{"id":1016,"date":"2006-04-27T07:14:24","date_gmt":"2006-04-27T15:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/04\/if_you_outlaw_cigarettes_only_outlaws_will_have_cigarettes.html"},"modified":"2006-04-27T07:14:24","modified_gmt":"2006-04-27T15:14:24","slug":"if_you_outlaw_c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/04\/if_you_outlaw_c.html","title":{"rendered":"If You Outlaw Cigarettes, Only Outlaws Will Have Cigarettes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m guessing the lucrative black market for cigarettes was an unintended consequence<\/a> of the city’s 2003 smoking ban:<\/p>\n

The smoking ban imposed in city jails three years ago has made cigarette smuggling so lucrative that a single smoke can command up to $20 from nicotine-starved inmates — leading to concerns about corruption behind bars, officials reported yesterday.<\/p>\n

News of the thriving sky-high black market came as the Department of Investigation announced arrests in separate cases of three correction officers, two cooks and a nurse’s aide on charges of taking bribes of $50 to $1,000 to sneak tobacco, cocaine and a cellphone onto Rikers Island over the past year.<\/p>\n

Two of the suspects — Correction Officer Glenda Glenn and nurse’s aide Cleveland Porter — were the first to face criminal charges for cigarette smuggling since the new rules were enacted in March 2003.<\/p>\n

“When the ban went into effect in 2003, that created a market and an opportunity for people who were going to want to continue to smoke in the facility and it has created a corruption hazard and a bit of a black market,” said Investigation Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn.<\/p>\n

She said a single cigarette could fetch $10 to $20.<\/p>\n

A bag a loose tobacco that stores sell for $2 might bring $40 to $50 in the illegal Rikers Island market.<\/p>\n

While cigarettes are considered contraband for prisoners, they’re perfectly legal for correction officers and others who work in the jail system. But perhaps not for long.<\/p>\n

“In light of these charges, [Correction] Commissioner [Martin] Horn and Commissioner Hearn are going to examine to what extent they will allow employees to carry personal amounts of tobacco,” said Deputy Correction Commissioner Richard White.<\/p>\n

That brought an angry response from Peter Meringelo, president of the Correction Captains Association, who warned in 2003 that the smoking ban would cause major headaches.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m guessing the lucrative black market for cigarettes was an unintended consequence of the city’s 2003 smoking ban: The smoking ban imposed in city jails three years ago has made cigarette smuggling so lucrative that a single smoke can command up to $20 from nicotine-starved inmates — leading to concerns about corruption behind bars, officials […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law_order"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}