While the rest of the country was observing the American Cancer Society's "Great American Smoke Out" on Thursday, inmates at the Lakes Region Facility prison in Laconia were making state history as part of the Department of Corrections first-ever "Smoke In."

The 350 medium-security inmates culminated a yearlong tobacco smoking-cessation effort at LRF with a series of events that highlighted both the health risks of smoking to themselves and to family members as well as the legal ones.

For 10 years, the LRF has been a tobacco-free facility. Possession of tobacco can result in an inmate being disciplined and the penalties range from loss of privileges, to transferal to a higher security prison, to en extension of their sentence.

If an inmate's friend or family member smuggles tobacco into the prison and is caught, the inmate lose visits while the family member or friend could face criminal prosecution themselves and if convicted, serve between 3.5 and 7 years behind bars.

The idea behind the "Smoke In" — which the DOC sponsored with the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services' Tobacco Prevention and Control Program, Belknap County CoRe Coalition and Breathe NH — was to educate inmates and their families about all the consequences of tobacco use, said Warden Jane Coplan, who noted that tobacco is the biggest contraband problem at LRF.

"There's big money to be made," she said, explaining that a one-pound tin of rolling tobacco can command prices of up to $500. The inmates don't have that kind of money, she continued, but they make arrangements on the outside where a third party can collect or make good on a debt incurred on the inside.

The tobacco is frequently dropped off along LRF's extensive wood line and senior, more powerful inmates will direct younger inmates to get it for them and to bring it back inside.

More times than not, however, that tobacco courier is caught, a point that was brought home during the "Smoke In" with a display of seized contraband, including a wrapped gift that contained tobacco products.

The tag on the gift read "Do not open til Christmas 2008" but the 2008 was crossed out and below was written "2009" with the explanation that the holiday will be delayed because "Dad got caught with tobacco."

Getting inmates to think about the risks of using tobacco — and having it inside LRF — is a good thing, said Coplan because the inmates will eventually finish their sentences and be released.

"The real world is a tobacco-free world," the warden said, "and that is the real world and they have to get used to it."

Coplan thanked the DHHS and Breathe NH, the latter of which helped bring a prison-specific smoking-cessation program to LRF. At LRF, that program is administered by Bernadette Brauns who, like Coplan, acknowledged that inside the prison, tobacco is "a huge commodity."

While she has no hard numbers, Brauns guesstimated that the majority of LRF inmates use tobacco while incarcerated, some simply because "a drug is a drug is a drug. If it's in demand, they want it."

And not only is tobacco in demand, it's deadly, too, she said.

According to the DHHS, "Smoking-related lung cancers are the number one killer cancer in America." Most smokers want to quit, said the DHHS, but "many lack the tools and resources they need to quit for good. Consequently, they will try an average of 8-11 times before they quit long-term."

With any luck, the "Smoke In" will have helped some inmates give up tobacco, said Brauns, with Breathe NH's Marie Mulroy adding that "it takes a community effort" — like the one on display Thursday in the LRF's Toll Building gymnasium — to help wean somebody off the noxious weed.

The LRF smoking cessation program has an extra benefit, Mulroy said, in that participants — the program is voluntary for those inmates who want to stop smoking but mandatory for those caught with tobacco — also get to apply what they learn toward getting their general equivalency diploma (GED).

The inmates get credit, in part, for the math portion of their GED by calculating how much it costs them — down to the individual cigarette — to smoke each year and they can earn credit for the English portion by studying the advertising on tobacco products, said Mulroy.

Judy Nicholson of the DHHS Tobacco Prevention and Control Program said the goal is to provide the inmates with strategies on how to quit by themselves while at LRF as well as teaching them about resources available in the community once they get out.

Inmate James Morrison from Hillsboro said he has wanted to quit many times and thinks the "Smoke in" will help him and other inmates toward that goal.

A smoker since 13, Morrison, who is 38, has a powerful motivation to be tobacco free: his sentence for being an habitual offender runs out in October 2009.

"I was already written up a few times for smoking," Morrison admitted, which is one reason why he doesn't want anything more to do with tobacco, and besides, "I'd wanted to quit for a long time," remembering how at one time he had a "nasty cough" from smoking.

A lot of inmates smoke at LRF, said Morrison, but on the other hand, "a lot of people don't and I'm now one of those."