Samantha Melamed
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Freddie Nole gave up smoking in 1979, after a bout of pneumonia put him in the hospital. But for the next 40 years, he always kept a pack of cigarettes or a pouch of Kite tobacco in his cell just in case.
Youd hold on to Kite, if you could afford to get it, until something came along that you wanted, and that would be the currency, said Nole, who was paroled in January after a half-century in prison. Tobacco was the answer for obtaining everyday necessities, as well as for managing exigent circumstances: I had friends I would try to keep out of the black market: I could give them something so they could not succumb to the borrowing. So, I always had cigarettes on hand for the purpose of exchangi…
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