Ector County jail sells over $19,000 in e-cigarettes in just one month

ODESSA, Texas (KOSA) - The Ector County Law Enforcement Center started selling e-cigarettes to inmates on May 8th. Jail Captain James Mckinney started with 2,000 total, about five different flavors. One costs about $14.

“Regular, menthol, peach, ice peach and then berry. I ordered 400 of each and we were sold out last week,” said Mckinney.

They were so popular, Mckinney just ordered 4,000 more.

“The best one is the ice peach,” said Mckinney.

In total they’ve made $19,476.50, profiting $11,776.50 on the e-cigarettes in just one month.

“If you’re making money off the inmates it has to go back to benefit the inmates, whether it be the mattresses I buy for them, the clothes, sheets, anything that benefits them, basketballs,” said Mckinney.

They’ve only had about 10 inmates mess with them out of the hundreds currently at the jail.

“If they tamper with them we’ll take them away for 14 days, if they tamper again with them, we’ll take them away for 21 days, if they tamper a third time then we’ll take them away until we say they can get another one,” said Mckinney.

On June 4th they also started delivering pizzas to inmates who purchased them.

“We’ve sold a total of 258 pizzas and 334 ranch cups within two weeks,” said Mckinney.

That’s about $3,000 in profit from the pizza alone, after just two weeks. This week’s order is so large Dominos has to use three different stores to make it.

Mckinney already has a big purchase in mind to put these new profits towards, a $140,000 x-ray machine to increase security at the jail.

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