Yes, that's a good question. Thank you for the comments about the work that my great staff do. I'm truly proud of them.
Just a quick aside: we just finished meeting with a parliamentary committee from Norway the other day and they've come to us to learn about the work we're doing, so we feel good about that.
Regarding tobacco, as a result of our implementing a tobacco ban within our federal penitentiaries, tobacco has taken on a much higher value within our penitentiaries. Tobacco is a significant currency among the inmate population. We now have a few staff who are being enticed by offers of money to bring tobacco into our institutions. For us, this is a slippery slope to bringing other things in that we don't want them bringing in.
We're finding that individuals are being offered--not just staff, but family members, other people in the community--anywhere from $200 to $2,000 to bring in a pouch of tobacco. Tobacco is not an illegal substance—it's just unauthorized. So people are being enticed. They think the worst they're going to get is a slap on the hand. It's just a little bit of money. Who's going to know the difference?
Unfortunately, for us it's a slippery slope—people get hooked by bringing tobacco into the institutions. The next thing is that within the package there are a couple of pills, a few containers of hash oil. But don't worry: it's just one package of tobacco and one package of drugs. But the next thing you know, we have violent incidents.