While cruising the Intertubes, I came across a story decrying Lindsey Lohan’s sentence to prison.
The poster noted LiLo smokes like a chimney, lights one up when she wakes up and goes through two packs a day. The poster then claimed going cold turkey would have (negative) health effects on her.
Can going cold turkey hurt a heavy smoker?
i went cold turkey on tobacco maybe 25 years ago. pack a day man. it’s slightly traumatic… but negative health effects?
She’s not going to prison, she’s going to jail, right? Either way, she shouldn’t be allowed to smoke if there’s no smoking allowed (and these days you generally can’t smoke inside anywhere anyway). It won’t hurt her at all.
First of all, bad precedent. “You can’t send me to jail because I smoke”? I don’t think so.
Second, I know a bunch of people who have gone cold turkey on tobacco, including my brother. They’ve been pretty darned grumpy for a while, but I haven’t seen any negative health effects.
On the other hand, when I was talking to my dad’s doctor years ago, I asked him if he could push my father to quit. At that point, Dad had been smoking for 70 years (he was 83 & started when he was 13). The doctor told me, “Frankly, the stress of quitting is more likely to kill him at this point than the smoking. Let the poor man have his cigarettes.”
Lindsey Lohan, however, isn’t 83 years old.
Have you seen her lately?
She looked pretty cute in court where the totally unfair judge decided to send a fine obedient citizen to jail for no reason.
She woulda been free and clear if it weren’t for that nail polish.
Nicotine withdrawal is not life-threatening. Nor are there significant health risks for withdrawal.
I work as a physician in a prison system that’s completely nonsmoking. I’ve dealt with thousands of new inmates going through nicotine withdrawal. None of them had legitimate medical needs based on their nicotine withdrawal. None of them suffered signicant morbidity due to nicotine withdrawal.
So, how does the underground economy work? What is the unit of exchange?
Thanks to Qadgop the Mercotan, and I sing his praises.*
I don’t think nicotine withdrawal is physically harmful as per Qadgop’s post above.
However, I will note that the complex I work at is entirely non-smoking EXCEPT for the palitive care folks and the psychiatric patients.
The reason for the former seems fairly obvious. The reason for the latter is that I guess mental health professionals have found that trying to quit smoking is detrimental improving mental health.
Now, Lindsay is certainly a bit wacked in the head, so I dunno.
Psych patients have a high rate of signing out of treatment Against Medical Advice if they are not allowed to smoke.
However, good evidence is lacking that quitting smoking is harmful for most mental illnesses.
Granted, schizophrenic patients act calmer when allowed to smoke during periods of agitation, but whether or not that keeps their disease under better control is open to debate.
In the maximum security facility where I volunteer, the prisoners have money, or at least the ability to store and spend money electronically. The accounts are funded by gifts from the outside and by very low-paying prison jobs for some. Since the facility-wide smoking ban went into effect a year or so ago, the inmates tell me that the price of a cigarette is now $5. Each. Contraband of all kinds gets into prisons, and gets used and traded.
Last I heard, canned mackerel was the new cigarettes. Not sure how that worked out…
New York prisons do not allow indoor smoking.
Worst case scenario is we give incoming prisoners nicotine patches to help them quit.
Which on relection isn’t really accurate. Locking them in a cell with no cigarettes pretty much has helping them quit covered. So I guess we give them nicotine patches to make them feel better about quitting.
Snacks and toiletries are the most common items.
I had to go cold turkey for 6 weeks in Air Force basic training. It wasn’t easy, but they kept us so insanely busy/active that the effects weren’t that bad, all things considered. I bet it would be a lot harder in prison, where you have all the stress, but not as much exertion or other things to occupy your time.
Of course, idiot that I am, I bought a pack of Malboro Reds at the airport on the way to my next base…and I’m still smoking 20+ years later.
I would have thought it’d be something else. 
I do believe though that for most alcoholics, you’re better off not going cold turkey – or rather, not without going through detox.
Nicotine ain’t alcohol. And alcohol is not allowed in prison either.
Which, of course, doesn’t stop people from either attempting to smuggle alcohol in or make it themselves. After all, if those folks didn’t break the rules they wouldn’t be in prison, right?
