Authorities at a Quebec prison announced Friday that they had seized a quantity of a highly-addictive drug before it could get to inmates.
The drug? Tobacco.
Officials at the Donnacona penitentiary, a maximum security institution just west of Quebec City with a capacity of 355 inmates, issued a press release Friday touting the seizure of 314 grams of tobacco, about 0.7 pounds, four days earlier.
The tobacco has what prison officials describe as an “institutional value” of $6,000.
A typical cigarette contains about 0.7 grams of tobacco, so the total seizure represents a haul of about 450 cigarettes.
According to those numbers, each cigarette would have a prison value of $13.30.
The same institution announced a haul of 52 grams of tobacco last March, along with 61.2 grams of marijuana.
Unlike inmates in many other countries, those serving time at Canadian federal prisons are not allowed to smoke.
The inmates were forced to put aside their smokes gradually starting on May 5, 2008.
Canada’s prison smoking ban recently been referenced in the U.K. where authorities have announced the intention of similarly banning smoking in prisons.
Canadian authorities have set up a tip line in hopes of preventing such illicit smuggling into their institutions, as 1-866-780-3784.
