Synthetic Drugs Sprayed on Paper Are Killing People in My TX Prison

Daniel Harris recounts how synthetic drugs sprayed on paper is the new prison crisis unfolding inside his Texas unit after multiple overdoses, alleged corruption, and unchecked drug use left prisoners dead and others permanently harmed.

Last Friday night, three prisoners died smoking the paper form of K-2 that’s liable to be sprayed with anything and is seldom really K-2. Rumor is it was on blue paper. I heard the Toon Head smokers trying to find some. It’s gotta be good if it killed somebody, right? They brought two of the dead back. One is dead forever. A-Pod, on 1-Building, had the two dead who came back and went on lockdown for 24 hours. G-Pod is on 3-Building, my building, where the guy didn’t make it back. They went on 24-hour lockdown. I also heard one of those who came back has brain damage. All due to fentanyl poisoning. More prisoners have had to be given medical attention since then, but Warden Lucas decided letting everyone see the Super Bowl was more important than the life and health of prisoners under his care.

Lockdowns, K-9 Units, and a Failed Response to the Prison Fentanyl Crisis

This morning, the K-9 teams were here in force. Something was found, and my pod, I-Pod, is now locked down. What’s fascinating about this whole situation is how often prisoners are seen by guards, impaired, and little or nothing is done. Most of the time, they’re only put in their cells where they either sober up or continue to smoke. Assistant Warden Edwards wants to create a rehabilitation program to help them get off drugs, because her father was an addict in prison and returned to his family ruined by drugs. I hate to break the bad news to her, but he was probably ruined by drugs before prison. You can’t force anyone to stop doing drugs. I should know. I’ve been a drug addict for over half a century. The joke on the unit is that all the best drugs will be on Warden Edward’s drug recovery building.

Enforcement, Accountability, and the Prison Fentanyl Crisis

I’m sick and tired of watching officers walk past slumped-out drug addicts to enforce petty rules and write petty cases while refusing to enforce the rules about doing drugs. If you want drug addicts to stop doing drugs, there has to be consequences to doing them. No one ever believes they’ll die, and they don’t really care anyway, but no one likes doing hard time locked in a cell, alone with no commissary. They have plenty of rules on the books that require enforcement to quickly put all the drug addicts on G-5, close custody. All it would require is the ranking supervisors to start writing officers up when they refuse to do their jobs, and write cases on every prisoner who seems to be under the influence. Make officers accountable, and the dope fiends will suffer the consequences for their choices.

Corruption Allegations and the Money Behind the Prison Fentanyl Crisis

There’s only one problem. Prisoners don’t go out and get their own drugs. Follow the money. You’ll always find a criminal at the end of the money trail. Right now I have two suspects in mind who need investigating. Ask yourself why Warden Lucas and his second in command, Warden Edwards, refuse to enforce drug policy. There’s really only one reason if you think about it. They must be profiting from the drug trafficking. Boyd Unit is corrupt from the top down. Send in the feds, and let’s find out what’s really going on.

Secondhand Smoke, Health Risks, and Living Through the Prison Fentanyl Crisis

It’s been days since the deaths. If not for narcan, we would have had three deaths instead of one. No one seems concerned except myself. The second-hand smoke is taking a toll on all of us, but especially the old and infirm. I have friends with COPD and other breathing and heart conditions being forced to live in this mess. What can we do about it? Most of us are old, and the smokers are young gang members with nothing to lose. With 34 flat years done on my 35-year sentence, picking up a weapon would be futile, when no doubt nothing would change except I would have a new charge and more time to do in Texas. That’s not an option I’m comfortable with.

In the mid-1990s, Texas stopped our access to tobacco, supposedly due to fears that secondhand smoke was causing illness in all the nonsmokers and guards. Now no one is concerned about secondhand smoke from the poisons sprayed on this imitation K-2 or the rolled toilet paper wicks they burn to light it. President Trump designated fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction and is finally fighting the war on drugs President Reagan and his wife began so many years ago. but who’s willing to protect us, the prisoners, from this deadly narcotic? It seems no one.

Living in Fear Inside the Prison Fentanyl Crisis

As I sit writing this, I watched my new cellie go buy K-2, and he was soon flopping on the floor. He has nothing and wants nothing except to chase his next high with an intensity only a drug addict ever shows. I live in a tiny cell, never knowing when or if he will trip out and destroy everything I own or attack me. Such things are common. In all my years here, it’s never been so bad before. And it seems it will only get worse. No one cares. My cellie was just put in our cell for being high, and no case was written. Which only proves how little they care and that the one case never written is for drug use.

Want to read more? Check out Finding Yourself in Recovery in Prison

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