Everyone I Know on Parole Is Vaping

Nobody ever really talked about cigarette alternatives in prison. Tobacco is abundantly available to anyone in Georgia Department of Corrections custody who can afford it, and even in prison systems where that isn’t the case, there’s just no market for things like vapes. Since being released in 2023, I’ve noticed a stark difference: Almost every single person I know on parole or probation is furiously vaping.

In my first year being back out in the free world, my desire for a cigarette has been strong. I’d quit smoking in early 2021 and hadn’t had that craving in a while. It’s a common experience. The stress of transitioning back into society, just trying to figure out your taxes, figure out how to afford your freedom with the constant threat of parole revocation hanging over you, figure out just how to exist… It’s a lot.

In prison, a pinch of tobacco can cost $50. But when you get out, commercial cigarettes are in some ways even more cost-prohibitive because you have more expenses. If you’re buying packs at $7 or $8 each, and you’re gonna smoke a pack or more a day, that’s over $200 a month that you now need for rent. When you’re on parole, especially if you’re on the sex offender registry, you don’t just need that money for rent—you need it to cover weekly classes, polygraphs, random drug-testing and other conditions of release that add up to hundreds of dollars each month. Or else you go back to prison.

I tried the nicotine gum, lozenges, all that, and they just didn’t do much for me personally. But vaping does get me through that craving. Instead of a pack or a pack and a half of cigarettes each day, I use longer-lasting brands of disposable vapes and get a new one every 12 or 13 days—which comes out to $30, maybe $40 a month. A lot of people who’ve gotten out and suddenly had an urge to smoke more than they’ve ever smoked in their life have realized the same thing.

So people are under enormous pressure, restricted from all substances except nicotine, and trying to avoid smoking themselves into an early grave.

All the people in this area on the sex offender registry, we all know each other. That’s normal, especially in rural areas, because we all have to go to the same classes. I run into at least one of them almost every single time I’m at the vape shop. One girl I’m friends with, if the shop is having a deal she’ll buy me one. When I go see her at the McDonald’s where she’s a manager, she’ll try mine, and if she likes the flavor she’ll buy me out of it.

Cost is one reason we’ve all switched to vapes, but it’s not the only reason. When you’re on parole, you’re usually not allowed to drink alcohol. You can’t use marijuana, even if you’re in a state where it’s legal for adult use. Synthetic cannabinoids are popular with a lot of people who are under some form of state supervision—including and especially prison—because they’re not readily detected by urine drug screens. But I don’t even want to try CBD oil because I’m afraid of how it might read on a drug test, and like many folks I’m just looking for something to help get me through the day.

So you’ve got people who are dealing with enormous emotional and financial strain, who are subject to random drug-testing, who can’t risk missing curfew or missing a single day of work, who are restricted from using pretty much every regulated or controlled substance except nicotine. They’re trying to make it however many months or years they have left on parole without using coping mechanisms that could send them back to prison, but they’re also trying to avoid smoking themselves into an early grave.

Most of us who’ve experienced the complete degradation of prison health care come out very aware that health is precarious, and we better look after it ourselves.

There’s a sort of stereotype that people involved in the criminal-legal system don’t care about their health, whether because of drug use or sex work or living on the streets or what have you. But in my experience at least, a lot of formerly incarcerated people are very health-conscious. I think most of us who’ve experienced the complete degradation of trying to get health care inside the prison system come out very aware that health is precarious, and we better look after it ourselves.

When I learned that there’s no good evidence linking vapes to cancer risk, and little to no harmful effects of secondhand vapor, it was encouraging to be able to make what I felt was the best decision for my health. And as far as mental health goes, it’s been a major, major source of comfort. 

Georgia banned vaping indoors in July 2023, a few months before I left prison. But people vape inside places with “No Smoking” signs all the time, and no one really makes a big deal out of it. I’ve seen people vaping inside at the nail salon. 

Vaping seems to come with an element of social connectivity that, if you were smoking cigarettes instead, you’d only get when around others who smoke too. With cigarettes, people who don’t smoke they look at me like, That’s nasty. You’re nasty. With vaping, the flavors seem to make the smell less bothersome to people; there’s almost something chic about it. I don’t mean to glamorize vaping, or to say that stigma makes some substances “worse” than others. But prison, and now being on the sex offender registry, are lonely experiences, and the truth is that this is a big reason vapes appeal to me, too. There are already enough things keeping me at a distance from the rest of the world; vaping doesn’t add to it.

Photograph via Library of Congress