News
Gage County supervisors split over e-cigs in jail
Sunday, December 29, 2013
Lincoln Journal Star
Four weeks after Gage County began selling e-cigarettes to jail inmates, supervisors on the county's board are split on continuing the practice.
Sheriff Millard “Gus” Gustafson approached the county's Board of Supervisors about the issue earlier this month, spurred by a proposed policy change to the county's employee handbook banning vapor or e-cigarettes.
Supervisor Kathy Setzer, who is coordinating the county employees' handbook revision, said although inmates do not fall under the employee handbook she believed it was not right for the county to sell e-cigarettes to inmates.
“They are in jail and I know this probably makes it easier for your jailers, but we are not in the business to make things more comfortable for people that are in jail,” she said. “If we don’t allow our employees to use them on our property and we don’t allow the public to use them on our property, why are we allowing the prisoners to use them on our property?"
E-cigarettes are plastic tubes the shape and size of a rolled cigarette which carry nicotine into the lungs through water vapor rather than smoke. Each e-cigarette carries approximately the same nicotine as one pack of regular cigarettes.
Gustafson learned about e-cigarettes when the county was negotiating a contract for housing prisoners with Washington County, Kan., in November.
The Gage County Sheriff’s Office later purchased 100 e-cigarettes for inmates. More than half have already been sold to inmates, who can buy four and use one at any time.
Jail administrator Lt. Tony Shepardson said the e-cigarettes were “selling like hotcakes” during a recent law enforcement committee meeting. Gustafson said the e-cigarettes both calmed some prisoners going through withdrawal and provided a financial benefit for the county.
The county purchases the e-cigarettes for $2.55 per tube and sells them to inmates for $7 each. The money is funneled back into the county’s general fund.
Supervisor Gary Lytle, the county’s law enforcement committee chairman, said Gustafson has the authority to run the jail as he sees fit and the law enforcement committee left it to the sheriff to decide how to move forward.
But Supervisor Dennis Byars, a cancer survivor, was critical of the idea of generating income from inmates purchasing e-cigarettes and said it is “the wrong thing for Gage County to say this is appropriate.”
“I think having an e-cigarette and having any influence of tobacco or nicotine in that jail is a horrible, terrible thing to do,” Byars said.
Gage County banned smoke and smokeless tobacco products on all county property and in county vehicles in August 2007.
So far, the e-cigarette industry is lightly regulated, and the vapor-based cigarettes are becoming increasingly popular among smokers in areas -- both indoors and out -- that have banned tobacco-based cigarette use.
That includes other county jails in Nebraska, including Thurston County, which charges inmates $20 for a puff of vapor-based nicotine.
