Nicotine Is Back in the BOP

The Federal Bureau of Prisons has started selling nicotine pouches.

That is new. The old commissary had cigarettes and chewing tobacco. It never had pouches. In the early 2000s the BOP pulled those tobacco products off the shelf. Official policy still bans tobacco. What the policy does not ban is nicotine. Contraband tobacco has been a pipeline for harder drugs and other banned items. Apparently somebody finally treated that as a reason to change the menu. Pouches are on it now.

We figured they would go with one of the major consumer brands that already carry FDA authorization. Instead the Bureau went with an “institutional” supplier. The quality is almost certainly lower. The price tells the story: packages are running about $9.50 on the commissary. At that price, volume was the deciding factor. The BOP is about to move millions of dollars’ worth of these pouches.

Before anyone starts dreaming about what that new revenue could do for programming, medical care, or staff retention, look at how the Bureau is already undercutting the upside. Early reports say many institutions are limiting inmates to one package at a time, and a lot of facilities only let inmates shop twice a month. That works out to roughly one pouch a day for anyone who uses them.

Anyone who has spent time inside knows what happens next. Inmates who do not use the product will buy the limit and resell to those who do. A secondary market is inevitable. It is still better than the old tobacco black market that funded more dangerous contraband. It is far from ideal.

If the purchase limit were closer to four packages instead of one, the black-market incentive would largely disappear. We are hoping the current restrictions are temporary, a cautious first step while institutions figure out demand and stock levels. Maybe they are. Time will tell.

The rollout is clumsy. Legal nicotine pouches should still cut into the demand for smuggled tobacco and take some of the violence and debt out of that market. Over time they should also lower the cancer rates that have been climbing in the federal prison population. The BOP rarely gets these things right on the first try. For once the policy is pointed the right way.