Federal officials are supporting a Native American claim that denying tobacco to prisoners for religious ceremonies is discriminatory.
In a brief filed in July, the U.S. Department of Justice said the state of South Dakota’s position “runs contrary to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and U.S. Supreme Court precedent.”
State officials eliminated Native American exemption for tobacco use in its prisons because, they say, “tobacco was being sold or bartered and inmates had been caught separating it from their pipe mixtures and prayer ties,” reported The Associated Press.
Native Americans filed a federal lawsuit in 2009 seeking to reverse the South Dakota Department of Correction’s ban. A similar lawsuit filed by a San Quentin inmate is pending against the California prison system.
San Quentin Native Americans Reggie Azbill and Chad Holzhouser say they are using kinicknick as a tobacco substitute in their ceremonies. Kinicknick is a blend of herbs, including peppermint, sweet grass, white sage, and cedar.
“Other religions have their Bibles; we have our ceremonial tobacco,” Azbill said. “Tobacco is like our Bible. It is the way we get connected with the Creator.”
“Smoking the kinicknick is just not the same as tobacco,” Holzhouser said. “It’s like wearing dirty laundry.”
New Mexico and Nevada have smoking bans in their prison systems, but allow the use of tobacco during religious ceremonies, according to the AP report.
