Federal inmates still subjected to smoking ills

To the editor:

Evolving standards of decency have accelerated the nationwide movement to eliminate smoking tobacco from public-access buildings and transit facilities. Federal inmate non-smokers have the same right as free citizens to live in a safe, clean, healthy and smoke-free environment. However, federal prison administrators cannot and will not enforce the no-smoking policy. Eighty-five percent of inmates and staff smoke.

Smokers have no right to smoke in prison. Many state prison systems have eliminated tobacco products. With the ever-increasing and aging prison population, medical care will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Smoking tobacco and related illnesses such as heart disease, lung cancer, diabetes and asthma are destroying the lives of smokers and non-smokers alike. Addicts suffer from compulsive behavioral disorders and are responsible for most of the violence in prisons. There is a cure for inmates addicted to nicotine: Make them stop smoking by removing tobacco products from federal prisons.

Attorney General John Ashcroft is responsible for bad management of prison health-care costs and thousands of lives. Wasted tax dollars used to treat smoking-related diseases could be allocated to provide better health care, to enhance prison conditions and to save lives.

PAUL THORPE

Scott City, Mo.