Brought To Us By Resourceful Canadian Prisoners: A Cigarette That's Good For You!

I've been pretty busy this last week so this one skipped by my sixth sense of tea related oddities.

Last week a Manitoba jail began serving up cruel and unusual punishment by banning tea. No, not tea-bagging, bagged tea. The prison has been attempting to be smoke free since November of 2003 but so far the inmates have shown just how smart an addiction and jail boredom can make you.

The inmates are now making tea cigarettes:

''The gum is boiled and there's a nicotine residue that's removed and dried and then sprinkled on the redried tea bag leaves, and then rolled''

Jail superintendent Cathy Sandney

As exciting as that sounds it can apparently take up to two days to make just one. I call foul on addiction getting any real credit for this as I was first inclined to believe since they could have got their fix from the gum a lot easier. I think peer pressure and boredom deserve the credit here. Before they tried using the tea bags they turned to the good book for the thin pages that probably made for a very nice smoke and showed just how tough they were.

He walked onto the yard with a devil may care look in his eyes as he puffed on his Bible Brand Cigarette.

As a result use of the Bible is being monitored very carefully.

Now I repeat that this is the wrong addiction for me but I can't help wondering how a smoked tea bag sprinkled with nicotine gum juice compares to a regular brand. I'm not willing or qualified to judge this comparison but I beg of you if you happen to be a smoker to try this. I would love to have a review on this page or even just to be able to link to your page. I was upset that I couldn't find a picture of the finished product as I think to fully grok this phenomenon we need to see a picture of a person smoking one.

I took the quote in this story from The Brandon Sun but it looks like it was a wire story since most every version I've come across is almost the same. If you happen to have come across a more detailed article (perhaps with pictures) or are willing to try this out feel free to share your wisdom in the comments here. If you want to email me about it you can do so at:

himthatwas.blog@gmail.com

Now go have a cup.