Prisons are battling a terrifying new drug smuggling method that involves paper soaked in potent synthetic drugs, which have been linked to a string of inmate deaths at the notorious Cook County Correctional Facility in Chicago. Deaths began in 2023, but were going down, until this year.
Per NY Post, investigators were initially baffled when 57-year-old inmate Thomas Diskin was found dead in his cell in January 2023. There wasn’t any obvious sign of foul play or an accident. The only unusual detail was tiny strips of singed paper scattered around his cell. Cook County Sheriff’s Office chief of staff Brad Curry instantly knew something was off.
A Virginia lab finally confirmed the horrifying truth: those paper strips were soaked in Pinaca, a synthetic cannabinoid that turned lethal when Diskin smoked it. Before authorities could even fully grasp what was happening, other inmates started dying under eerily similar circumstances. By the end of 2023, six inmates had fatally overdosed after smoking these tiny strips of drug-soaked paper.
“A new drug that is very, very toxic and very, very deadly”
Curry explained the urgency of the situation, stating, “We didn’t know what was on [the paper in Diskin’s cell], but we knew it was a drug. And it was a race against time… we had a new drug that is very, very toxic and very, very deadly, that Narcan apparently didn’t work on.” Jail officials quickly tried to warn prisoners through signs in every ward.
Guards also ramped up their efforts to inspect mail and search cells. However, the drug-soaked paper was incredibly hard to detect. Sometimes the strips were so tiny that guards couldn’t find them, and even drug-trained K-9s couldn’t sniff out the new synthetic cannabinoid. They did everything they could short of banning paper entirely.
The smugglers then moved from the mailroom to forged legal documents, and the pages of thick books, packaging them to look like they’d been sent straight from Amazon or a bookstore. The financial incentive behind this dangerous trade is massive, too.
A single 12×12 piece of drug-soaked paper could fetch up to $10,000, and was lucrative enough to sway some staffers. Surveillance footage from 2024 also caught a female visitor tossing a sullied paper slip to an inmate.
Cook County law enforcement has conducted 130 felony arrests since 2023, targeting both smugglers and inmates. They are also using a sophisticated paper-testing machine, which checks if paper contains anything other than ink. Their efforts led to a reduction in prison deaths to just one in 2024. However, we are already at two deaths in 2026.
The synthetic cannabinoids used are constantly evolving and growing stronger. Curry believes the increased potency is a major factor in the rising death toll this year.
As this epidemic hits other prisons nationwide, Curry and his team are terrified of what would happen if this drug-laced paper made its way to the outside world, since the paper hides in plain sight and is untrackable through conventional means. He believes it would spark “the biggest war on drugs you’ve ever seen in your life.”
The thought of it reaching schools, simply because it’s on paper, is genuinely terrifying and could be “worse than the fentanyl in the street.” It would definitely not be a wholesome story of grilled cheeses, nor does it need a prison break to get to the strong stuff.
Published: Apr 7, 2026 07:35 am