Ruminations: Smoking Contraband Illicit Synthetic Drugs in Nevada Prisons

"That is the most utilized synthetic drug that's out there, because it has the most dramatic effect when they reprint these letters."
"That's all being driven by the synthetic drug problem we have."
"Those synthetic drugs affect everybody differently. One person can die; one person can be seriously changed of behaviour where their behaviour becomes so erratic and violent."
"Others can just collapse and pass out and become unconscious for hours."
Nevada Department of Corrections director JamesDzurenda

AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

Ink printed on mailed correspondence is responsible for a substantial increase of overdoses in the Nevada prisons inmate population, according to the state's chief of prisons. And that is because difficult-to-detect synthetic drugs have been mixed into the ink used to print those letters. Hospitalization of inmates has increased substantially, with at least 127 inmates with suspected overdoses having been hospitalized in the current year. This, in comparison with 59 hospitalized for the same reason in all of 2024.

Four years earlier, Prisons Director James Dzurenda explained at an October 16 Interim Finance Committee meeting, only five inmates had overdosed. Six of seven prison homicides reported in 2025 were also connected to the synthetic drug, he advised state lawmakers revealing that the crisis was responsible for his coming before the committee to ask it to allocate some $350,000 to have a firm conduct a "comprehensive operations study" at High Desert Prison. To identify the connection between the smuggled synthetic drug and high prison operations overtime costs.

The very issue of increased hospitalizations was responsible for burgeoning overtime costs, he stressed. These are drugs, he explained, comprised for the most part of a chemical whose manufactured use is to kill wasps. The chemical is injected by traffickers into partially filled ink cartridges. The cartridges are then used to print pages laced with the chemical, and the final stage is to mail them into the prisons.

High Desert State Prison. (Photo: Michael Lyle)

Each of those printed pages can be cut up to produce hundreds of smaller doses. And those small doses can then be smoked to take advantage of the drug properties inherent in the synthetic compounds. This, he said, is a growing national phenomenon. Each ensuing overdose requires that the affected inmate be hospitalized and monitored by law enforcement. The process takes corrections officers away from their normally assigned duties, contributing to overtime.

The chemical odour has become so prevalent in housing units, that it has become difficult to track the origin, making the situation that much more frustrating. The department had bought a single mail scanner, constantly in use since 2024. These are costly deices, worth $250,000 for each one. The intention is to acquire more of these mail scanners capable of detecting the presence of the drug, enabling the seizure of the contraband before it does its damage both to inmates and the bottom operations line of the prison system.