The 33 had pornography and marijuana, says miner

One of the 33 Chileans caught up in the San Jose mining accident last year has revealed his fellow miners had access to marijuana – but nobody offered him a toke during his 69 days trapped 700 metres underground fearing for his life.

"When you saw five of them headed up to the bathroom, you knew what they were doing," says Samuel Avalos. "We knew they smoked marijuana [but] they never even offered me a toke.

"They were peeling away from the group in small cliques, wandering towards the bathroom. We looked everywhere for a colilla [stub of a joint]."

The drugs appeared in the mine after Chilean authorities relaxed their previously strict control of the letters sent down below by relatives of the 33 men in the final few weeks leading up to the rescue.

The families took advantage of this to send cigarettes, medicine and illicit drugs to their loved ones. Once the miners were busted, however, the Chilean government were so worried they even discussed using a sniffer dog at the minehead.

Avalos (above) makes the revelation in a new book by New York Times reporter, Jonathan Franklin, which also reveals the men were given pornography after an offer to donate 10 sex dolls was deemed inadequate.

Incredibly, the miners had worked out a system with a separate room for 'conjugal visits' to the plastic women they hoped to receive, using condoms for hygiene. But the authorities couldn't stomach this, concerned that having to share the dolls would lead to jealousies.

The doctor who assessed the men's health needs from the surface during their ordeal, Dr Jean Romagnoli, explains: "There was a guy who offered inflatable dolls for the guys but he only had 10.

"I said 33 or none. Otherwise they would be fighting for inflatable dolls: whose turn is it? Who was seen with whose fiancée? You are flirting with my inflatable doll."

Instead, the men – including the spliff-starved Avalos – received a supply of pornography to satisfy their needs.

But perhaps the most startling revelation in Franklin's book is the news that the supposedly live feed of the rescue, watched by a billion people around the world, actually contained two pre-recorded sequences, used to cover up embarrassing incidents.

When a landslip inside the mine cut the cable bringing pictures to the surface, earlier footage from the bottom of the rescue shaft was spliced in until it could be repaired. In a separate incident, a fierce argument between the rescuers was also covered up with old footage. ·