Topeka ? Inmates at Kansas’ eight prisons will be crunching on carrots, chewing more gum and otherwise coping with nicotine withdrawal when a ban on all tobacco products takes effect March 17.

Tobacco is already prohibited in about half of Kansas’ county jails and in 18 other states’ prisons, including Texas, Maryland and Minnesota, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections.

Kansas’ ban, which will apply to prisons’ staff and visitors as well as inmates, was announced in April 2002.

Prison officials began working a few months ago to prepare the state’s 8,900 inmates — an estimated 75 percent of whom smoke or chew tobacco — for the day they will have to quit.

The process began at the medium-security Ellsworth Correctional Facility in January, when it received its final shipment of cigarettes, chewing tobacco and supplies for homemade cigarettes, warden Ray Roberts said Monday.

As the prison’s tobacco supply began to run down, Roberts said, some inmates became edgy and there were a few more fights than normal. But the mood was generally positive on Monday — two days after the canteen sold out of cigarettes — as inmates and staff began focusing on improving their health, he said.

“I haven’t had inmates express frustration,” said Roberts, who headed the Corrections Department’s task force on the tobacco ban. “The lion’s share of them know it’s better for them to stop. They certainly don’t have the willpower to stop, and this will force them to.”

Roberts studied bans in other states’ prisons and concluded that smokers would need alternatives to tobacco.

He noted that losing their cigarettes could anger inmates, but he said 13 other states banned tobacco without producing any security problems or uprisings.