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Date Posted: 20:37:28 01/25/05 Tue
Author: Femok
Subject: The path to enlightenment

Thou shalt not smoke Bibles

Fri Jan 21 2005
By Kevin Rollason

THE Bible is the hottest read at Headingley jail these days.

Unfortunately, it's because the inmates are using the Good Book's pages to roll cigarettes.

Staff and clergy at Headingley Correctional Centre are trying to get prisoners to stop the practice after dozens of Bibles were defaced and destroyed by inmates who use the thin pages to roll and smoke homemade, uh, cell-made cigarettes.

Prison staff have begun to confiscate all the Bibles distributed to prisoners and are keeping track of who has them and who's defacing them.

In a letter and interview with the Free Press, Robert Mayo, a Headingley inmate, said he has been left with only his own personal Bibles he brought with him to the institution.

"They shouldn't be doing this because the Bible will show (inmates) another path instead of the one they're following now," Mayo said. "I believe that's what society wants as well."

When contacted, Gideons' Ron Muir said he hadn't heard what the inmates were doing to the Bibles instead of reading them, but when he confirmed it was true he said he would be bringing more Bibles to Headingley. "They've destroyed about 50 Bibles," Muir said.

"They're going to need more Bibles and I'll bring them more."

Muir said he had only heard of one other prison, in the United States, where inmates used pages from the Bible to roll smokes.

Headingley superintendent Cathy Sandney said even though the provincial institution is smoke-free, it's still hard to stop inmates from smoking.

"It's very difficult to catch them because they're very discreet," she said.

Prisoners are quite creative in an effort to light up. Sandney said inmates use a mixture of tea leaves from tea bags and Nicorette gum. The inmates boil the gum, mix it with tea leaves, dry it, and then put it in some form of rolling paper.

And Sandney vowed -- not necessarily on a Bible -- that there will be consequences to prisoners who rip out pages.

"They may have to pay for it," she said.

"We're just in the process of pulling them. Normally, there's a consequence when you destroy government property." Mind you, these are inmates who have probably already violated other Bible commandments. Think, Thou shalt not steal.

If they've violated Thou shalt not kill, the inmate most likely wouldn't be at Headingley, which is for prisoners with sentences of less than two years of length, but at the federal Stony Mountain Institution.

At Stony, prisoners can buy and smoke cigarettes in fresh-air areas and in cells.

"Our inmates don't have to use Bibles because our inmates can smoke here -- that's the difference," said Stony spokeswoman Linda Garwood-Filbert, adding smoking is currently under a national review.

Murray Gibson, executive director of the Manitoba Tobacco Reduction Alliance, was shaking his head at the lengths inmates would go to satisfy their nicotine craving.

"This shows the addictive nature of smoking," Gibson said.

"A person has to want to quit before they quit. Many people just aren't there yet."

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