Years ago, in that other life before prison, a friend once announced, I am going to quit smoking pot. I replied, It’s been nice knowing you.
And I meant it. He was a good dude, but there was no way he would be able to stay in our marijuana-smoking circle and not smoke marijuana. He never did quit; still gets high to this day in his 60s, though we don’t talk much anymore. Turns out, I was the one who left the circle.
I’ve known many people in AA or NA who stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and kept going to the meetings mostly because those were their circles. They were lonely outside of them, with people they weren’t bound to by common experience.
People are more likely to shake a habit if they have something to replace it with, rather than carry on with a hole in their life. And as social creatures, when we leave or are pushed out of a circle, we want to belong to a new one.
Whether the new circle is safer than the previous one, it’s always a lateral move in a social sense. People move from drinking circles to sober circles; pharmaceutical circles to street-supply circles; cocaine circles to methamphetamine circles; cigarette circles to vape circles.
Now that I no longer smoke cigarettes, I’m no longer in any smoking circles. The people who are no longer come find me when they’re going for a smoke. They no longer seek me out when they need a drag or can offer one. Our circles don’t overlap anymore. Since I’m not privy to those conversations, it was a while before I realized that many of them these days are about vapes.
People who never smoked cigarettes before prison will start, just to have a circle to stand in.
Because years ago prison administrators made the catastrophic choice to ban tobacco, in here the defining lines of smoking circles are hardened not just by social preference, but by liability, as is the case with many banned drugs on the outside. When a social activity is criminalized, anyone who doesn’t partake can’t be part of that circle.
Whatever conversation you’re in pauses if someone comes to whisper in your ear, Want in on ___? Pulling you into another circle, which at that moment is more important. Everyone understands that the rest of the first circle doesn’t need to know the details.
It’s nearly impossible to survive prison entirely on your own; in here you need to be part of a circle, regardless of whether you want to. People who never smoked cigarettes before prison will start, just to have a circle they can stand in.
Many would gladly vape instead, if there was a vaping circle they could join. Whether or not they already knew about the health benefits of switching from smoking to vaping—even if they believed all the anti-vaping propaganda they’ve ever heard—they’d still make the move if vapes were sold at commissary. The benefits of moving from a contraband circle to an authorized one are obvious.
The existence of a contraband market separates corrections officers into their own circles.
Prison administrators make too much of denying their slaves any comfort. Vapes provide that nicotine buzz, that few seconds of nerve-calming, mind-settling relief in an otherwise anxious and miserable world, that we’re simply not allowed to have. They’re so focused on showing their power to control the smallest aspects of our lives they’re willing to lose control over the larger system.
The existence of a contraband market separates corrections officers into their own circles. The believers, who quit. The smugglers, who get used up by the gangs and discarded, or get arrested, or quit. No continuity in either circle; too much turnover.
In addition to the increasing criminalization of vapes as if they are tobacco products, and the national pastime of using prisoners to test the human tolerance for deprivation, one reason the powers that be say we can’t have vapes is that this would facilitate contraband drug use. This reason is the most laughable. The existence of a contraband market facilitates contraband drug use. The contraband is already here, has been here, will stay here at least until they finally replace all the human officers with robots. In the meantime they could have us standing in circles held together by authorized products that put money in their pocket, and have officers who stay on the job for more than a few weeks.
Image via Wake County, North Carolina
Show Comments