Only a few prisons have proper X-ray equipment, and metal detectors. I didn't see any. Ten years ago when I was first in prison drug use was restricted to a few inmates. Today everybody uses cannabis and many prisoners who have never touched heroin are getting their first taste in prison. It is the ideal drug for such a place, time passes effortlessly in a warm glow, while the prison hustler collects up the cash as it comes into the prison and then passes it back out again.
Credit is constantly available.
The user who can no longer persuade his outside connections to support him is likely to be threatened, beaten up and eventually stabbed. Sometimes he will start again in a new prison until the grapevine catches up with him. AIDS comes into the prison with the prisoners. Shared syringes are crudely washed out between use, nonetheless sufficient to kill the virus. There are health education programmes on drugs and AIDS in most prisons and very little unsafe sexual activity now takes place.