New Drug Scourge in Prison: Ordinary-Looking Paper

At Chicago's Cook County Jail, the drug of choice now looks like office supplies. In a sweeping New York Times investigation, reporters Azam Ahmed and Matt Richtel trace how sheets of seemingly ordinary paper—books, letters, even legal documents—have become vehicles for powerful synthetic drugs that are killing inmates faster than investigators can identify what's on them. At least seven people have died since early 2023 after smoking drug-soaked pages, some laced with cocktails of opioids, tranquilizers, cannabinoids, and stimulants so new they aren't yet illegal. The story focuses on the Cook County facility, but authorities in prisons across the US are dealing with the same problem.

The reporters follow the lead investigator at the jail, Justin Wilks, as he and his team confront a drug trade that has quietly leapfrogged traditional contraband: dealers spray lab-made chemicals onto paper worth thousands of dollars a sheet, route it through girlfriends, corrupt staff, legal mail, and even third-party Amazon-style book shipments, and sell tiny rectangles inside for hundreds of dollars. Police labs take months to decode each new compound, while illicit chemists churn out fresh variants in what the newspaper calls an "arms race in potency." Read the full story, which notes that authorities fear this new technique is headed to the streets.