Garth George: Smoke ban won't set inmates free

Photo / Thinkstock

One of the stupidest things the anti-smoking brigade has done, aided and abetted by the docile politicians and bureaucrats who aid and abet them, is to have smoking banned in our prisons. If ever there were an example of ideology divorcing people from reality, then this is it.

For not only will this ridiculous ban fail utterly to stop prisoners smoking for longer than it takes them to get free, it is likely that it will further sour the already perverse atmosphere that pervades all prisons. Expect trouble.

The powers that be didn't listen to people like Corrections Association president Beven Hanlon, who said when the ban was announced in January last year: "People coming off nicotine can be very unpredictable and very anxious and aggressive, and we're going to have a large part of our prison population going through that and we're going to have to manage them."

Or to the experienced and respected director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment, Kim Workman, who warned that it would be particularly difficult for new prisoners who were already grappling with drug and alcohol withdrawal, and mental and physical health issues.

He said the move was likely to cause "violence or mayhem of some kind" and to create a black market in tobacco in jails. I'll bet that market is thriving right now.

But even if those things don't happen (nicotine patches and lozenges notwithstanding), the ban will not achieve any lasting benefits. A report in a Sunday newspaper last weekend said that overseas studies showed that even if inmates stopped smoking because of smoking bans, a vast majority relapsed when they were released back into the community.

Interviews with former smokers from one tobacco-free correctional facility showed that more than 97 per cent relapsed within six months of being released.

"In order to reap maximum health gains from the total smoking ban in prison policy, comprehensive cessation support for all inmates needs to be provided to ensure that they quit during incarceration and stay quit upon release," researchers at Auckland University's Centre for Tobacco Control Research are reported as saying.

Can you imagine the Government handing out money for stop-smoking therapies in an environment in which two-thirds of the populace smokes? Fat chance.

The whole thing is absurd.

Meanwhile, another article in that same newspaper reports Otago University's Professor Jim Mann as saying that obesity rates have increased dramatically in New Zealand - particularly among young people.

The most recent Ministry of Health figures show that one in five children is overweight and one in 12 is obese, according to their body mass index (BMI) rating; and almost 50 per cent of the adult population is overweight or obese based on that rating.

Even taking into account that the BMI is all very well if you're a 20- or 30-something, but takes no account of age and other conditions which have a bearing on height-to-weight ratios, it seems we have a hell of a lot of unhealthily fat people among us.

According to Dr Mann, obesity is now so endemic, it has become boring. "Not only is it boring, but there is something that goes in parallel with being boring and that is that people don't recognise it." Dr Mann believes people don't recognise it because society has a new "normal".

He says the Government should help to create an environment in which healthy choices are easy to make. "We can't just sit back and say 'we need to hand out a few pamphlets'." Dr Mann says the epidemic must be addressed at all levels - from daily family choices to industry regulation.

"I don't think I'd go quite as far as taking a cigarette approach and saying 'fatness kills you', but the risks of obesity are getting to be comparable to the risks of smoking.

"This is the whole fallacy of the nanny state's philosophy. We say seatbelts are compulsory because road accidents kill people and accidents are a cost to society. Well, obesity kills people and the consequences are a huge cost to society."

Here Dr Mann reveals the very core of the problem of getting people to stop smoking and/or overeating. To compare smoking and obesity with the wearing of seat belts is not just to compare apples with oranges, it is comparing apples with cricket balls.

Smoking and overeating are addictive behaviours and all addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever) contain not just a physical but a mental, emotional and even a spiritual dimension. It is fundamental to the treatment of addiction that the addict must first really want to change.

It is a fact, too, that smoking and overeating (or drinking or drugging or shagging) are merely symptoms of underlying mental, emotional and spiritual dysfunctions which have to be exposed and dealt with before any recovery can take place.

Until those who set out to ameliorate these lethal conditions come to understand that, they're all wasting their time - and our money.