An $11 can of Bugler tobacco can generate $5,000 in sales of toilet-paper-rolled cigarettes in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Cocaine, by comparison, only sees an 800 percent markup behind bars.
"If people on Wall Street knew about this, they'd be investing in tobacco," said Bill Claspell, an investigator for the Colorado Department of Corrections' Office of Inspector General.
A black market for tobacco sprang up the day it was outlawed in Colorado prisons four years ago. The ban followed a national trend to stave off second-hand-smoke lawsuits by inmates.
Since then, prisoners and prison staff members have conspired to smuggle tobacco into every prison in the state. Because nearly all of the state's 18,000 prisoners are smokers, everyone immediately recognized the potential.
"We're talking about a lot of money," Claspell said. "This isn't about getting high. It's about making money."
Since the tobacco ban, Claspell and other officers have opened 154 criminal investigations and made dozens of arrests.
Because tobacco is so easy to buy and smuggle into prison, it has become the top reason state corrections officers have been charged with crimes, with 18 guards, teachers and supervisors prosecuted in three years, prison officials say.
"Some prisoners refer to (the tobacco contraband law) as a retirement assistance program for correctional officers," inmate Larry Bowers said in a newsletter called "Inside Justice" published at the Fremont Correctional Facility.
Prison workers who never were tempted to buy illegal drugs on the outside have justified smuggling tobacco into prison, officials say.
"The allure for staff members is the dollars," corrections Inspector General Mike Rulo said. "They rationalize that tobacco is not an illegal substance. But the consequences are just as dire."
Even though tobacco is outlawed, inmates smoke secretly - for example, in cells late at night when lights are turned down, and in steamy laundry rooms.
Richard Torres said he was the housekeeping supervisor at Arrowhead Correctional Facility in Canon City when he was fired for agreeing to bring an inmate two cans of tobacco a week for about $400. Torres had 18 years on the job when he pleaded guilty to a felony count of introduction of contraband. He was sentenced in May 2001 to 90 days in jail.
Ruby Gordon-Penny, a former general equivalency diploma teacher at the Fremont facility in Canon City, lost her job last year when she agreed to bring tobacco to a teaching assistant inmate she fell in love with. She served a two-day jail sentence and was placed on two years' probation for a felony contraband conviction.
The impact of the tobacco ban on Colorado's prisons has more than just legal ramifications. A new subculture quickly evolved with dynamics similar to prohibition in the 1920s and '30s, which spawned a violent black market for liquor.
A new wave of prison entrepreneurs has set up intricate sales networks.
Prison guards or work-release inmates, who leave the prison for jobs such as fighting fires, sneak it in. Distributors divvy it out to four or five middlemen. And the middlemen make rollies and sell them to hundreds of inmates. Inmate enforcers punish inmates who can't pay their debts.
Much of the business is run outside prison walls.
Outside bookmakers receive checks from families of inmates, get the cigarettes and then deposit the money in bank accounts of relatives of inmate distributors.
"It wouldn't look right if all of a sudden an inmate has a stash of thousands of dollars in his cell," Claspell said.
Crooks who serve as jailhouse tobacco brokers have enlisted relatives who thought they were only breaking a prison rule - and not committing a crime - when they assisted. But they, too, have been charged with felonies.
One girlfriend of an inmate stashed tobacco in an empty McDonald's bag and dumped it near a predetermined road sign, where an inmate road crew was to pass by picking up trash, corrections investigator Jay Kirby said.
Other wives passed balloons filled with tobacco to their husbands' mouths when they kissed in prison waiting rooms, he said.
A wife of another inmate made papier-mache lava rocks filled with tobacco and dropped them in a rock garden where inmate groundskeepers friendly to her husband would work, Claspell said.
The inmate tobacco smugglers rely on outsiders to hide money transactions.
Elizabeth Catalan, a relative of Arrowhead inmate and tobacco network mastermind Emanuel Tomas, served as the banker in the Torres contraband case, Claspell said.
"She kept a real good set of books," he said. "She had almost daily conversations about money orders."
She received checks from the families of inmates buying tobacco, and cut checks to Torres' neighbor Daniel Duran, who took a cut for handling the money and then handed the rest to Torres. She made deposits to Tomas' bank account as well, Claspell said.
Catalan was convicted of a felony contraband charge, and served 30 days in jail and one year of probation, according to court records.
Prison rollie customers addicted to tobacco also rope their relatives into their troubles, Kirby said.
Debts add up quickly to hundreds of dollars when it costs $3 for a rollie that only provides a few quick drags.
But many inmates just accumulate debt and don't have relatives willing to pay it off. And prison thugs paid by tobacco distributors punish them.
"I once saw a man get stabbed twice for a two-pack debt," Bowers said.
John Armintrout, convicted of attempted second-degree murder in a scheme to kill his wife, had a tobacco debt at Four Mile Correctional Facility in Canon City, Claspell said.
"He went to the shower one day and came back with a broken jaw," he said.
Supply rather than demand tends to dictate tobacco prices, Claspell said. The demand is guaranteed with thousands of inmates addicted to nicotine, he said.
But the supply end can be fickle. Tobacco conduits can suddenly be cut off.
In August, when investigators arrested security officer James Alan Griffith, 52, who had been sneaking a carton of tobacco a week into Skyline Correctional Center in Canon City, tobacco became scarce. The cellblock price of cigarettes shot up to $200 a carton, Claspell said.
Inmates have developed ingenious if not hazardous methods of smuggling, rolling and lighting cigarettes.
Some have jammed lead pencils into electrical sockets to create a spark, since matches and lighters are also contraband.
Bowers said that although the Department of Corrections has prosecuted tobacco smugglers, officials have not tackled the root cause of contraband operations: thousands of inmates addicted to nicotine.
But prisons don't offer smoke- cessation classes to nicotine addicts, and nicotine patches cost more in prison commissaries than inmates earn in a month, the inmate said.
Corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan said inmates are offered cessation classes and that they have been given copious supplies of hard candy and carrot sticks to help them stop smoking.
But investigators acknowledge their arrests are only scratching the surface of a thriving tobacco black market.
It would take a team of investigators working full time to catch all of the tobacco dealers, Claspell said.
"We're just catching the dumb ones," he said.
