County Making Nice Profit Selling E-Cigarettes to Inmates

NASHVILLE — A sheriff’s office in Tennessee has made a hefty profit selling vapor cigarettes to inmates.

As most Americans know by now, e-cigarettes are battery-powered devices designed to deliver a nicotine-powered punch to traditional smokers, but without the traditional smoke.

Don Hall, director of accounts and budget for Dickson County, said officials will enjoy the e-cigarette windfall.

“We make quite a few dollars off of them. You’d be surprised how they use them things up there,” said Hall, who added county officials began the practice about a year ago.

“We probably made $75,000 to $80,000 this year alone just on the profit of those cigarettes. It may even go to $100,000 next year.”

County officials place that extra revenue in the general fund, which typically pays for expenses associated with the sheriff’s office, jail, trustee’s office and ambulance services, Hall said.

But is there potential for abuse?

In a recently released audit, state comptrollers reported county officials paid $33,015 for these e-cigarettes without seeking competitive bids.

County officials responded by saying they had, in fact, sought competitive bids, but that came later in the year, according to the audit.

“We only got one vendor to even bid on it,” Hall said.“I’d figure we would have had 10 of those vendors, but we only had one.”

Read more at Watchdog.org

(Photo from Flickr and it was cropped.)